What are “fairy circles”? They are polka dots of bare earth, regularly scattered across arid grasslands. Scientists first described fairy circles in Namibia in the 1970s and sparked a global debate in the scientific community about the causes of the phenomenon.
In 2016, a group of international scientists concluded that, in the Australian Pilbara, “fairy circles” arose from spinifex plants competing for water and nutrients – a similar explanation to the one they proposed for fairy circles in Namibia. These stories were amplified by the media, but the voices of Aboriginal desert people were not reported.
