Cydonian Imperative: The Face--Natural or Artificial?

The acquisition of a complete, overhead view of the Face on Mars is a historic occasion that demands caution and scrutiny.

Since the remarkably detailed new image hit the Net, I've encountered a great deal of confusion and disillusionment on behalf of the justifiably curious public as well as from the self-appointed "experts," who have offered us the predictable stew of negative sound-bites and extremely little in the way of actual science. Saying "it's a hill" without recourse to geological evidence does not make the Face a hill, just as the finger pointing at the Moon is not the Moon.

Critics have unanimously declared the Face "natural" because the newly revealed eastern side of the formation is not a perfect match with the familiar western half, despite the fact that no Face investigator ever suspected such a match in the first place. From Mark Carlotto and Mark Kelly's orthorectifications to Kynthia Lynn's stunning analog models, the relatively "chaotic" morphology of the eastern half has been amply demonstrated from the beginning.

Indeed, the variation between halves was made quite clear in Viking frame 70A13 in 1976. (Richard Hoagland would later use this image to posit his "feline double-image" hypothesis, which appears, provocatively enough, more tenable when assessed in higher resolution.) As demonstrated by Chris Joseph, the Face retains a remarkable degree of symmetry. "Eye sockets" are present on both sides, as are the right-angled extensions of the "framing mesa." (While NASA assures us that symmetrical rectilinear features appear elsewhere on Mars, the agency has yet to produce a single image that would defend this unusual position.) Right angles are extremely rare in nature, and the Face, whatever it represents, boasts enough of them to warrant careful archaeological inspection. The Face can be neatly divided down its centerline (as marked by the unusual "harelip" feature noticed by Mark Carlotto), confirming the estimated 95+ symmetry of the mesa's base. This figure alone argues compellingly
for artificial origin.

2. The Two Sides of the Face

There is no arguing that the respective sides of the Face are different, and in this sense I concur somewhat with the skeptics. The apparently "chaotic" appearance of the eastern half can be attributed to any of the following factors:

1.) Erosion. The eastern side's relative irregularity may be the result of wasting and/or wind/water erosion. Lan Fleming has already offered that the smooth appearance of the Face's eastern side seems inconsistent with mass wasting as a geological mechanism. This theory presupposes that the Face was at one point (perhaps millions of years ago) much more human-like than it appears now.

2.) Structural decay. If the Face is an intentional sculpture, the eastern side's irregularity may be due to literal collapse of the Face's surface, implying a hollow interior. Fine-scale details detailed by Robert Harrison of Cydonia Quest suggest this might be a useful scenario in furthering our understanding of the Face mesa's origins.

3.) Intentional design. If Richard Hoagland's "double image" model is correct, the "irregularity" noticed may be no such thing, but an intentional aesthetic element identical to certain visages carved by the ancient Mayans.

I find the "double-image" possibility well worth pursuing, as the construction of mile-long sculpture may have necessitated maximizing resources to include the most possible culturally significant detail. We suffer a limiting tendency to forget that the Face, if artificial, may never have been built for "us" at all, but strictly for the society that built it.

If the "encoded" message of the Cydonia Face references hominids and felines, as Hoagland boldly ventured ten years ago, then confirmation may only come after on-site archaeological study.

3. The "Null Hypothesis"

Of course, extreme skeptics will maintain that the options above are merely attempts to rationalize away the fact the Face is not "perfect" (i.e. consistently anthropoid). But again, no one seriously pursuing this enigma ever expected such a thing. The Face presents a wealth of anomaly just the way it is; there is no need to invoke wishful speculative models in an attempt to bury the Artificiality Hypothesis--especially when we finally have the data Mars anomalists have been clamoring for for decades.

If the Face is artificial, then we will probably not know for sure until a manned mission to the Cydonia Mensae region is able to examine the features in question. The new image has simply forced us to confront the Face on its own terms; announcements "confirming" the Artificiality Hypothesis and those relegating the Face to freak geology are, in my view, premature and betray the anthropological disorientation we find ourselves confronted with in our attempt to make sense of potential extraterrestrial artifacts.

I sincerely hope future efforts to make sense of the Cydonian enigmas are carried out by proper investigation as opposed to "science by proclamation," as witnessed by NASA's recent comments.