Faces from the Chasmas

Meanwhile, to continue with the eternal verity, "truth is stranger than fiction."

Here's R1601629, "Aladdin." Notice the turban with the little face at the apex, and the little head and face he uses for an ear. Sorry guys but it's there; all you have to do is look. And it's not painted on the lens. Facial features will be described.

Aladdin’s features are decidedly humanoid. The image depicts a young male, apparently clean shaven or with a small goatee. Both eyes are visible in this semi-profile facing to our right. Aladdin seems to be looking up; his eyebrows are furrowed which looks (to me) like a look of confidence, though admittedly that's interpretive. He is wearing a turban, (hence his name), with, as I said, a small face and perhaps a jewel at the apex. I already mentioned the ear trinket.

Another interpretation: small odd looking faces seem to have some kind of cultural significance, because they are often seen interspersed with the dominant face of a scene or mosaic.

Aladdin’s face seems well proportioned and has apparently withstood the ravages of time which have befallen other faces on Mars (e.g., the Cydonia Face). His well formed nose is intact; he has two lips, furrowed lines in his forehead, and two well defined eyes, with outlines, lids, irises, and apparently lashes.

Further hi-res images will confirm or falsify some of these claims. Some of them seem quite obvious now.



And Aladdin tinted.



And in Matte.



Neil

Aladdin (shown in previous post) is located west Candor Chasma floor at 74.3 W, 5.18 S. The resolution of the image is 4.54 meters, which is medium for a high resolution MSSS narrow angle image. That makes the face and head around 400 meters wide and 700 meters long. We can't tell if it is a raised bas-relief without MOLA data or better resolution. But what we have right now is respectable, and it is clear that Aladdin is not going to rub his magic lamp and go POOF!

This will be a great one for further imaging.



Neil

Here are some possible rock sculptures. You can tell they are hewn from rock (if artificial) and not etched or "painted" in the ground or a wall, because of the shading.

E0500447, "Aztec."



R0501902, "Rock Sculptures."



"Data," tinted. This face is around 1 km wide (to 2 km wide for the Cydonia Face). Resolution is 3.01 meters, which is enough to see some detail. However, other than the obvious well propotioned, rock-hewn features, there isn't much to see. Data has eye sockets in the right places, but no eyes, unless they are buried under regolith (or under ice), in which case this would be a good prospect for an apriori prediction: namely, should we find eye details under the possible ice, that would be a strong confirmation of artificiality. Data does have a nostril in the right place, a well formed nose, and a clearly defined mouth in the right place. He even has what could be called an "ear" complete with "earlobe," again in the right place.



"Mrs. Data," tinted. Mrs. Data has kind of "beakish" face, but has a visible, oval shaped outine for an eye, and the suggestion of a feminine hairdo, as well as a fairly evident neck, chin, sloping forehead, and nose.




And from the same strip, "Arrows or Sevens, and possible symbols." I count three, all oriented the same way and near the rock sculpture (see context image.)



Context image.



Here are some more possible symbols. Note the "F" shaped one with the curved backbone reminiscent of the "T or E" backbone from a previous topic.



Neil

Based on the current evidence it should be quite easy to accept the reality of the possibility of many faces on Mars. By the time this present project is complete we will see that they range in size from around 50 meters wide to 2 km wide. There may indeed be faces at "other scales" both smaller and larger, but we can deal only with the sizes that fall within the parameters of the MSSS data for now, the rest are still pure guesswork.

The fact that this evidence is not yet given credence seems to me to not really be a scientific issue at all but one of psychology, or more accurately social-psychology. The existence of hundreds or possibly thousands of humanoid and animal faces on Mars is simply beyond belief at the present time for the reasons we have discussed in previous posts. But scientific reality in the final analysis does not depend on the beliefs of the majority of people living at any given time period in history. Ultimately if enough men and women with the ability to understand, exist, eventually this knowledge will spread to the broad mass of humanity, and then everyone will believe. The majority ultimately accept the beliefs of the innovators—provided they prove to be right when history makes its judgment. What I’m describing here, this law of social-psychology, is as precise as any law of physics. This law was perhaps unkindly symbolized metaphorically by the famous Three Monkeys—"see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil." It has also been described in several books.

As an aid to the gradual process of forming belief, it helps to be able to formulate a mental (hypothetical) model, to explain how such a set of circumstances can be conceivably possible, namely numerous faces on another planet, with little or no other apparent evidence of civilization in the form of buildings or other construction artifacts. One model formulated by Tom is that as a moon of the builder’s home planet, this would be a likely place for a space faring civilization to construct art to be viewed from low orbit. So I will call this the “Tourist Attraction Hypothesis.”

But as I will show in a paper I’m writing on the subject, there are other models equally capable of explaining the evidence at hand. They can only be briefly mentioned here.

One is the “Landmark Hypothesis.” If a very old civilization survived on Mars, whether as a moon or as the original planet of that civilization, they would necessarily have had to move underground to survive on that now dead planet. As we may discover when we eventually colonize Mars, it may prove to be much more economical to build underground rather than on the surface in order to utilize the heat of the planet’s interior, along with its liquid water, not to mention the protection against the many dangers of living permanently on the surface on planet with only a small remnant of its original atmosphere. These underground dwellers would need a way to identify their “towns” or “family property” in some way. So perhaps a family patriarch or matriarch serves as a landmark or identifier, in the manner of the “family crest” of medieval times on Earth. If true there should be extensive archeological evidence of underground dwellings on Mars.

Another possible model is the “Alien Historical Records Hypothesis.” Perhaps observers of Earth from a distant star have long resided on or near Mars (perhaps in one of its moons). Since sub-light space travel is a very long term proposition, these aliens may not be able to make trips to their home world. Their “job” may be to observe Earth history and report back by radio transmission, to their home world. Perhaps they while away the years by constructing pictures of the most interesting thing on Earth, namely its human’s and animals.

Another model was suggested by Gregg. I will call it the “Ancient Earthlings Hypothesis.” Perhaps a lost, past Earth civilization had space travel and created these artifacts of themselves on Mars.

Another possibility is the “Unknown Culture Hypothesis.” Suppose that as we build buildings and houses to live and work in and create technology and write books, their culture was so totally alien to our own that we can not even guess at the purpose of the faces. Perhaps they are a form of picture writing, perhaps they are dwellings.

A last model is the “Communication to the Future Hypothesis,” which I mentioned once before. Perhaps a dying civilization wanted some future civilization—us—to know of their existence, and perhaps ultimately as a warning.

I don’t know which model, or perhaps some other, will prove to be true. I just wanted to make the point that there is a reason for every seemingly unexplainable thing.

Neil

I want to go back to Aladdin for a moment since my brother brought it up in another post. I had purposely made my Key under the "KISS" principle, (keep it simple stupid), since I'm having enough ajada for posting "too many faces." I mentioned above that the dominant face in a mosaic is often accompanied by many little faces. I know some people have trouble with the small ones, but nevertheless they're there. Sorry JR but I have to do some more interpreting here (whole lot of interpretin' goin' on around here).

I think the little faces represent "Jinn," (concept from Arab folklore, meaning little spirits that influence human affairs. It's in the dictionary). If you notice, many of these Jinn have comas, implying that they are "flying" through the air or aether (in the mosaic not in reality). We may have inherited more of their culture than we imagine. Here's Aladdin with the little guys indicated. The Jinni in front of Aladdin's mouth is a normal looking humanoid guy, semi-profile (our) left, looking up.



And on the KISS principle again, here are the normal Homo sapiens lines for forehead and jaw to chin outline, and if you assume he has a goatee (small beard) you can subtract an inch at most to find the actual chin. The white line is interrupted by the Jinn (or obstruction) blocking a view of Aladdin's mouth. That is if you assume normal human anatomy, which I have every reason to do here.



Neil

Here is another apparent rock sculpture with an artificial looking background. M0802833 "Face on Triangle."



And with triangle deliniated.



Neil