6. Hunab Ku, Tuns & Baktuns in the Crops
13/7/96 Overton, Wiltshire, UK Photo: Lucy Pringle Hunab Ku
The formation above is quite suggestive of "Hunab Ku", the so-called Mayan symbol for Galactic Centre.* If this interpretation is correct, then the attached crescent - a symbol interpreted in the later 1999 formations as the eclipsed Sun - may represent the eclipse of Galactic Centre by the Winter Solstice Sun, the event which Jenkins has argued, corresponds to the end of the Mayan Long Count on 21/12/2012. The comet-like outlier in the foreground immediately suggests the return of Quetzalcoatl, but on Lucy's postcard version, the tail is missing (as is the arc to its left), so it must be a path left by a visitor.
*UPDATE Aug 2006: It has now been established that the symbol was first published in the codex Magliabecchiano, with commentary by Zelia Nuttall (1903). It was originally a rectangular a rug design from the Zapotec area of Mexico, and was first associated with Hunab Ku and the centre of the Galaxy by Jose Arguelles in The Mayan factor (1987). However, Hunab Ku is a Yucatec Maya deity and the symbol (made circular by Arguelles) is a central Mexican symbol, not a Maya one.
Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire, 23/5/1999. Photo: Steve Alexander East Kennett, Wiltshire, 2/7/2000. Photo: Steve Alexander
In 1999, at Avebury Trusloe, (or Beckhampton depending to where one thinks the boundary is), a "fried egg" appeared, containing 18 "sperms". Around the edge were 20 smaller circles. 20 Kin (days) = 1 Uinal; 18 Uinals = 1 Tun (360 days).
The following year, 2000, gave us a 20 x 20 grid at East Kennett, in which expulsion cavities were found (see gallery). 20 Tuns = 1 Katun; 20 Katuns = 1 Baktun (144,000 days).
PREDICTION: In 2001, we should get our first 13-fold formations, since 13 Baktuns = 1 Great Cycle (1,872,000 days), and the Great Cycle ends on 21/12/2012.
UPDATE: 13 did appear in the fields at the end of the 2001 season see Sixth Sun Crop Formation