Martian Genesis: The Extraterrestrial Origins of the Human Race

IN JUNE 1976, NASA space probe, Viking I, went into orbit around the planet Mars. Just under two months later, a second probe--Viking II--was put in place. These two craft undertook a massive photographic survey of the Martian surface.

Among some 60,000 pictures returned by the orbiters, eighteen were taken at 40.9 degrees North latitude, 9.45 degrees West longitude, a region known as Cydonia Mensae. Five of the eighteen showed a curious rock formation that looked like a human face. The best of these photographs received widespread press coverage. The rock formation was dubbed the "Face on Mars."

Three years after the pictures were returned, independent experts began seriously to analyze the NASA images of the Cydonia region. They were interested not only in the "Face" but in several other nearby features of an unusual nature. In 1993, a group of highly respected academics from the United States and Sweden endorsed a report by Professor Stanley V. McDaniel on the Martian anomalies.

The report presented evidence that the "Face" was artificial.

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Inis Tuaisceart, the northernmost of the Blasket Islands off the southwest coast of Ireland, is colloquially known as An Fear Marbh, the Dead Man. The reason for this curious name is that the island's rock formations give it the appearance of a corpse laid out for burial. Although the resemblance is striking, there has yet to be any suggestion it is artificial. The Dead Man is nothing more than the result of natural weathering and erosion.

The distinguished astronomer and expert in extraterrestrial intelligence, Professor Frank Drake, thinks the "Face on Mars" is something of that sort. Like the "Man in the Moon," it's "just an accident of topography and photography." NASA took much the same view when the images were first released. Official statements dismissed the "Face" as a trick of light and shade created by the way sunlight struck a natural rock formation. But Professor McDaniel isn't so sure. He has problems with the fact that the two best Viking  images of the "Face" were taken at different angles of the sun (10 degrees and 27 degrees). They were also taken with different camera angles, satellite altitude and orbital inclination. He argues that if the "Face" was a trick of the light, it should have disappeared--or at least distorted--when the light changed. Professor McDaniel doesn't think the "Face" is a trick of the light. He thinks it's a face and he believes it may be artificial. There are other experts who agree with him.

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Photoclinometry is a technique developed by astronomers to help analyze the topography of the moon. Essentially it estimates the shape of an object from the relative degrees of light and shade in a photograph--shape from shading. Dr. Mark Carlotto, an authority on digital image processing based at the Analytic Sciences Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts, applied the technique to the Viking photographs. Not only was he able to work out a consistent three-dimensional structure from both the main images of the "Face," but he was able to predict the appearance of each image (at their differing sun angles) by analyzing the other. He concluded:
The features are present in the underlying topography and do seem to reflect recognizably facial characteristics over a wide range of illumination conditions and perspectives.
In other words, what seems to be a face in the photographs is actually a face on the ground. It's not, as Professor Drake claims, an illusion like the "Man in the Moon."

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This doesn't mean it can't be a natural formation like Inis Tuaisceart, or the Old Man of the Mountain, a face-like rock in New Hampshire.

But both Inis Tuaisceart and the Old Man of the Mountain have human features in profile. To achieve a profile likeness, you only need an outline. A full-face likeness is more complex. A full-face three-dimensional likeness--as revealed by photoclinometry-is more sophisticated still. There is not a single known example of such a natural formation anywhere on Earth, the moon, or even Mars if we ignore the "Face" itself.

Just how good a representation of the human face exists on Mars is underlined by studies of the photographs. When you first look at the most widely published of the NASA images, what you see is an eye-socket, the outline of a nose and a portion of a mouth. The left-hand side of the "Face" (to the right of the picture as you look at it) is in shadow. The whole thing is partly framed by some sort of platform that looks like a helmet.

But this image is the result of a digital transmission. Digital cameras on orbiting spacecraft encode data received from their subjects and transmit this encoded data back to base. First interpretation of the data gives the broad outlines of the subject photographed. Computer enhancement is needed to extract the fine detail. This is done not by any form of retouching or guesswork, but by statistically recovering the data used to create each individual pixel of the original. It is a standard approach to interpreting broadcast photographs from space.

Under computer enhancement, it has been shown that the "helmet" of the "Face on Mars" is decorated with evenly spaced diagonal stripes. There is a crescent diadem on the forehead made from crossed lines at the exact axis of symmetry. There are teeth in the mouth. All these features appear in both the main Viking images, so they are not random artifacts created by radio interference or anything of that sort. The eye, under contrast control, reveals a brow, an eyelid, and a raised pupil outlined in contour lines.

On the shadow side of the "Face," computer enhancement shows the headpiece continues around to frame the head. The line of the mouth also continues. There is a second eye socket just where you would expect one to be. Computer reconstruction of the 3-D "Face" shows three-dimensional symmetry.

This level of detail more or less rules out the possibility that the "Face" was formed by wind erosion. As a natural feature, each of its elements would have to be explained by a wholly different geological rationale.

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James L. Erjavec is a geologist and computer/geographic information system analyst with more than thirteen years experience. He has developed an extensive feature map of the Cydonia region of Mars to assist in the establishment of a geologic baseline for continued studies. Erjavec does not believe any of the curious features at Cydonia can be the work of wind erosion.

In a paper published in 1996, he pointed out that the theory of erosion is based on the premise that the Martian northern lowland plains were once covered with a kilometer or more of erodible sediment. But in 1989, geologist G. E. McGill used crater dimensional equations to conclude that only a slight to modest erosion of the northern lowland plains could have occurred. At best, no more than 200 meters of material could have been stripped off the plains. This is simply not enough to allow the development of the Cydonia structures through erosion.

2 A prominent bulge at the genital area has prompted a local variation of The Dead Bishop.

3 In a footnote to the book Is Anyone Out There? by Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, Simon & Schuster Ltd., London, 1993.

4 Quoted from The McDaniel Report compiled by Stanley V. McDaniel, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 1993.