The Mars Mystery

by Graham Hancock

  Computer image processing reveals subtle details not visible in the raw Viking images. These include bilaterally crossed lines above the eyes and stripes reminiscent of the Pharaonic “Nemes” on the headdress; a tear below the eye; and teeth in the mouth—all of which occur in both frames 35A72 and 70A13, thus reducing the possibility of their being artifacts of image processing. (Mark Carlotto)

  Naturally occurring “faces” on Earth (note that they only tend to occur in profile, and only work from specific angles); see how the face in the middle image disappears in the right image when photographed from a different angle, whereas the Face on Mars retains its facial characteristics from whichever position it is viewed. (Mark Carlotto)

  On April 5, 1998 the Mars Global Surveyor captured this image of the Face. NASA has tried to dismiss the image as proof that the Face is natural, but the new image has only heated controversy around the Face’s artificiality. (NASA)

  Three-dimensional reconstructions of a 1976 Viking frame, using “shape from shading” technique, of different views of the Face, revealing it to be face-like from all angles. (Mark Carlotto)

  Dr. Mark Carlotto’s digital enhancements of the Viking frames yields a dramatic overview of the weird grouping of the anomalies on the Cydonian plain—including the Face, the City, and the enigmatic D&M Pyramid—much more conducive to an artifical landscape than any freak arrangement of random geological processes. (Mark Carlotto)

  A three-dimensional computer-generated overview of the Cydonian anomalies, looking toward the Face from the City. (Mark Carlotto)

  The enigmatic structures known as the City. (Mark Carlotto)

  The cliff and crater. Note how the linear structure on the cliff seems unaffected by the ejectasplash of the nearby crater, as if it was positioned after the formation of the crater, pointing to the fact that this feature is possibly non-natural, as it is not a feature of the original landscape, but a relative latecomer. (Mark Carlotto)

  The mysterious five-sided structure known as the D&M Pyramid (named after its discoverers, Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar) rises some 1,250 meters from the surrounding plain, and is about a thousand times greater in volume than the Great Pyramid at Giza. (Mark Carlotto)

  The so-called Fort with its inexplicable angular walls (top). There is no known natural process that can carve straight sides like this on the exterior and interior of an object concurrently with such angular precision. Are we witnessing a new geological phenomenon or the evidence of intelligent design? A computer-generated 3-D perspective viewed from above is seen at bottom. (Mark Carlotto)

  Professor Horace Crater’s analysis of the layout of mounds within the City area reveal that their alignment is unlikely to have occurred naturally, as they consist of repetitious patterns of the same basic triangular units expressing meaningful geometrical measurements, whose chances of occuring naturally are astromonically low.

  Computer-generated perspective view of the D&M Pyramid showing what some believe to be a tunnel-like entrance to the right. (Mark Carlotto)

  Illustration of Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover, whose 1997 landing was headline news worldwide, bringing Mars back into the public debate after twenty years of silence. (NASA)

  On July 16, 1994, the first of 21 fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levi 9 collided with Jupiter. Gene Shoemaker, co-discoverer of the comet, when asked what could be learned from this collision, simply replied, “Comets really do hit planets.” (NASA)

  Our solar system is teaming with asteroids, many of which regularly cross Earth’s orbit. Here we see Gaspra, a sizeable inhabitant of the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. (NASA)

  The scars left on Jupiter from the impacts of Shoemaker-Levi 9. The impact ring created by cometary fragment G was larger than Earth. (NASA)

  Doomsday! Cometary impacts on Earth were most probably responsible for mass extinctions in the past, such as the extinction of the dinosaurs. If Earth was to suffer a large cometary impact in the future, it is entirely possible that all human life would be wiped out in an instant. Are we doomed to share the fate of our red neighbor and become a barren and lifeless hell-world? (NASA/Don Davis)

  Erol Torun has shown that if we use the apexes of the three pyramids to form a Fibonacci curve (the curve produced within phi, the golden section) then the exact location of the Sphinx is dictated by the rectangles that house this curve—indicating that the pyramid builders must have had a good knowledge of phi.14

  Other notable “number games” are as follows:

  The slope angle of the Great Pyramid is 51 degrees 51 minutes 40 seconds. The cosine of this angle is 0.6179, which can be rounded within three decimal places accuracy to 0.618. As the reader will recall the golden phi ratio is 1:1.618. The figure of 0.618 is the amount that must be added to 1 to produce phi.

  Correct to two decimal places, phi is also hinted at by the ratio between the slope of the Great Pyramid and the angle of culmination of the sun at the latitude of Giza at the summer solstice in the epoch of 2500 B.C., estimated at 84.01 degrees (51 degrees 51 minutes 40 seconds; that is, 51.84 degrees, divided by 84.01 degrees, equals 0.617).15

  Within the depths of the Great Pyramid, in the enigmatic King’s Chamber, is it a coincidence that the wall height plus half the width of the floor produces the measurement of 16.18 royal cubits, again incorporating the essential digits of phi?

  Let us return to the Great Pyramids slope angle and the way in which its cosine generates a figure related to phi. We have also seen that there is a relationship between the slope angles of Teotihuacan and the latitude of the site, and between Cydonia’s latitude and e/pi. Now the Great Pyramids latitude is 29 degrees 58 minutes 51 seconds. If we round this out to 30 degrees, we will find that the cosine to within one decimal place is 0.865—that is, the tetrahedral ratio e/pi.

  The e/pi value also seems to be incorporated in the ratio of the Great Pyramids slope angle (51.84 degrees) to the slope angle of the southern shaft of the Kings Chamber (45 degrees). This ratio is again within one decimal place of e/pi.

  Pi is found in the base perimeter-to-height ratio of the Great Pyramid (1,760 to 280 cubits = 2 pi).

  A SINGLE UNIFYING THEME

  In 1988 in an article in the obscure scholarly journal Discussions in Egyptology, the British mathematician John Legon published intriguing data on the siting of the Giza monuments, showing that “the size and relative positions of the three pyramids were determined by a single unifying theme.”16

  These monuments, he pointed out, are

  accurately aligned with respect to the four cardinal points, and the bases are displaced from one another in a formation that meets the requirements of a coherent dimensional relationship. Difficulties with the site chosen for each pyramid also suggest that there must have been some constraint in addition to the usual factors such as ease of construction or architectural setting.17

  When he drew a rectangle that would exactly enclose the three pyramids, Legon discovered that its dimensions were 1,417.5 cubits east to west, and 1,732 cubits north to south.18 Within a fractional margin of error these figures are equivalent to 1,000 × sqrt 2 and 1,000 × sqrt 3. The diagonal across the rectangle is equivalent to 1,000 × sqrt 5. The reader will recall that values of sqrt 2, sqrt 3, and sqrt 5 are found many times over in the D&M Pyramid of Cydonia.

  Another point about Giza that emerges from studying Legon’s work (which was undertaken without any knowledge of Cydonia) is that the placement of the pyramid of Menkaure is seemingly defined by the Cydonian tetrahedral constant t.19 The northwest corner of the pyramid of Menkaure is positioned on a line subtending 19.48 degrees from due south of the adjacent (southwestern) corner of the neighboring pyramid of Khafre. And the apex of the Menkaure pyramid is positioned exactly on a line subtending 19.52 degrees from southwest viewed from the same position.

  GATEWAYS

  If there are artificial pyramids on Mars filled with pi, phi, e, and t values and there are artificial pyramids on Earth fill
ed with pi, phi, e, and t values, then the explanation must logically lie in one of four hypotheses:

  There is no connection between the pyramids of Earth and the pyramids of Mars. The similarities are all coincidences.

  An ancient Martian civilization that built pyramids came to Earth and taught the art of pyramid building to humans.

  An ancient human civilization that built pyramids went to Mars and taught the art of pyramid building to Martians.

  An ancient nonhuman civilization that built pyramids came from somewhere outside the solar system and left its mark on both Mars and Earth.

  Of all these hypotheses we suggest that the first—coincidence—is the least likely to be correct. Common sense insists that if the pyramids of Mars are artificial, then there must be some connection with terrestrial pyramids.

  More than 4,000 years ago, the pyramids of Giza were viewed by the ancient Egyptians as a gateway to the stars. The pyramids of Teotihuacan served exactly the same function for the ancient Mexicans. In both places men were believed to have been transformed into gods. In both places there were astronomical myths of great suggestiveness and complexity. In both places the monuments were said to reflect the pattern of heavenly prototypes. And in both places, as we were to discover, ancient texts and traditions show a special interest in the planet Mars.

  17

  The Feathered Serpent, the Fire-Bird, and the Stone

  HUGH Harlestons calculations of the measures of the mysterious Mexican city of Teotihuacan eventually led him to the theory, which it is beyond our scope to explore here, that this site could inscribe a vast astronomical map—in which the distances between major structures stand in relation to the distances between the planets in the solar system.1

  Harleston also developed a “quite unconventional” astronomical reading of an ancient Mexican myth concerning Xipe Xolotl, the twin brother of the high god Quetzalcoatl. The mythical bringer of civilization to Mexico at the beginning of the present epoch of the earth, Quetzalcoatl was often symbolized—notably at Teotihuacan itself—as a fiery feathered serpent (the name Quetzalcoatl means “feathered serpent”). Both Xipe Xolotl and Quetzalcoatl are also enigmatically spoken of in these myths as having been skinned—literally “flayed” alive (and, indeed, the flaying of sacrificial victims was a standard practice in ancient Mexico, particularly among the Aztecs, the last people to transmit the ancient myths before the coming of the Spaniards).

  Harlestons reading sees the symbolism of Quetzalcoatl as referring, at one level, to

  a flayed planet—the twin to Mars—whose outer surface is conceived to have been deliberately “peeled-off like an orange….” According to this reading, the damaged twin companion—Xipe Xolotl, the flayed Red God of the East, or Mars, retreated to a new position.2

  This imaginative rendering does make us think.

  As we have seen, Mars is technically a “flayed planet” with the hemisphere north of the line of dichotomy lying on average three kilometers lower than the southern hemisphere—which in its turn bears the scars of a cataclysmic bombardment. Could the myth of Xipe Xolotl be some garbled remembrance of such a catastrophe—involving the Red God of the East, Mars, having his skin flayed from his body by a “fiery serpent”? If so, then we are obliged to ask what real—as opposed to mythological—entity could fit the description of a fiery, feathered, or winged (and hence in some ways bird-like) serpent flying across the heavens with vivid plumes stretching out behind it.

  Throughout history, and in all cultures, it may be significant that precisely such imagery has again and again been applied to comets. For example, Donati’s comet of 1858, the “most splendid comet of the nineteenth century,” was spontaneously described by eyewitnesses in the following terms:

  It had a head like a serpent, its body near the nucleus twisted and turned like a gigantic red serpent, and its tail, flashing like golden scales, spread over 40 million miles.3

  We will see in part 4 that the nuclei of comets can be very large—up to several hundred kilometers in diameter—and can travel at speeds in excess of a quarter of a million kilometers per hour. Were such an object to strike a planet—Mars or Earth—it would certainly release sufficient impact energy to cause unimaginable devastation—perhaps even enough to “flay” its victim of its stony outer crust or “skin.”

  ASTRONOMICAL CYCLES

  In Indian myth the god Vishnu lies sleeping on the cosmic ocean wrapped in the coils of the Naga serpent Ananda. From out of Vishnu’s navel a lotus arises on which is seated the four-headed creator, Brahma. Brahma lives for one hundred Brahma years (vastly, infinitely longer than human years), on each day of which he opens and closes his eyes a thousand times. When he opens them a world comes into being; when he closes them a world comes to an end—a thousand worlds a day, millions of universes spawned and destroyed in his lifetime. When Brahma dies, the lotus closes, and withers. Then from Vishnu’s navel a new lotus blooms, a new Brahma is born, and the process begins again.4

  Each cycle of coming in and out of existence is itself subdivided into four stages, or epochs, called Yugas: the Krita Yuga (consisting of 1,728,000 human years), the Treta Yuga (1,296,000 human years), the Dvapara Yuga (864,000 human years), and finally the age in which we now find ourselves, the Kali Yuga (432,000 human years.)

  Significantly, as Professor Hermann Jacobi has pointed out:

  The astronomical aspect of the yuga is that, in its commencement, sun, moon, and planets stood in conjunction in the initial point of the ecliptic, and returned to the same point at the end of an age. The popular belief on which this notion is based is older than Hindu astronomy.5

  So the archaic marker for the end of an epoch is, in the final analysis, an astronomical one, an actual event in historical time, denominated in terms of the precession of the equinoxes. This is the cyclical process, described in the last chapter, which slowly shifts the zodiacal constellations against the background of which the sun rises on the spring equinox. (As the reader will recall, sun and stars were said to return to any arbitrarily defined starting point along the ecliptic—and the cycle begins again—once every 25,920 years.)

  Not only in ancient India, but all around the world, it was understood that our present epoch of the earth is only one of a succession of such epochs—each with their own distinct and characteristic starting and ending points. Not only in ancient India, but all around the world, it was understood that the end of each cosmic epoch would be brought about by a cataclysm and followed by the birth of a new age.

  PERIODIC DESTRUCTIONS

  According to the Hopi of Arizona:

  The first world was destroyed, as a punishment for human misdemeanors, by an all-consuming fire that came from above and below. The second world ended when the terrestrial globe toppled from its axis and everything was covered with ice. The third world ended in a universal flood. The present world is the fourth. Its fate will depend on whether or not its inhabitants behave in accordance with the Creators plans.6

  In Aztec and Mayan mythology, we are living in the fifth epoch of creation, characterized as the “Fifth Sun.” The fourth epoch was said to have been brought to an end by a great flood in which almost all men died (“There was water for fifty-two years and then the sky collapsed”). And it was prophesied that the fate of the fifth epoch—our own—is that it will end in a cataclysmic “movement of the earth” that will destroy civilization and perhaps even exterminate all traces of human life.7 In the enormously sophisticated mathematical and calendrical system of the Maya, which we have explored at length in other works, the date of this coming cataclysm was foretold. That date is 4 Ahau 8 Kankin. When it is translated into the Gregorian calendar that we use today it becomes A.D. 23 December 2012.

  Ancient Egypt also preserved complex beliefs concerning the cyclic creation and destruction of worlds. The little-known Edfu Building Texts,8 for example, speak of a remote golden age, many thousands of years in the past, when the gods themselves lived on an island—the “Ho
meland of the Primeval Ones.” The texts tell us this island was utterly destroyed in a terrible storm and flood caused by “a great serpent.”9 The majority of the “divine inhabitants” were drowned,10 but the survivors of the cataclysm settled in Egypt where they became known as “the Builder Gods, who fashioned in the primeval time, the Lords of Light.”11 According to the Edfu Texts, it was these survivors who set out the foundations of all the future pyramids and temples of Egypt and who handed down the religion that would much later be practiced throughout the land under the semi-divine rule of the Pharaohs.

  THE BENBEN OF HELIOPOLIS

  The religious system practiced at the pyramids of Giza in Egypt was administered from the nearby sacred city of Heliopolis and had, as its central icon, a pyramidal stone called the Benben, which was said to have been made of bja metal (literally, “metal from heaven”). As we have argued at greater length elsewhere, there seems little doubt that this object, which was venerated in a special temple at Heliopolis called Het Benbennet—literally “Mansion of the Phoenix”—was a fragment of an iron meteorite.12

  Essentially there are two sorts of meteorites: stone and iron. The iron, for obvious reasons, tend to be black and often larger than the stone variety, since they suffer little or no damage when they hit soft ground. Also, when entering the earth’s atmosphere, some iron meteorites retain their direction of flight rather than roll about. These are called “oriented”—that is, they maintain their orientation as they fall, like an arrow or pointed artillery shell. As these oriented meteorites are heated during their fiery fall, their front part tends to melt and taper down. When found, therefore, they characteristically have the shape of a cone. Two good examples are the large conical—indeed almost pyramid-shaped—meteorites Williamette (to be seen in the American Museum of Natural History, New York) and Morito (presently on exhibit at the Danish Institute of Metallurgy).13