The Face on Mars -- fascinating, perplexing, evocative, bewildering

The face on Mars has long captivated students of the (formerly) Red Planet. Its visage was thought to stare up vacantly into space, a forlorn message to Mankind,a ruined tribute to a now-vanished race. For decades, cottage industries undertook to prove and disprove the theories of those who took comfort from the certain knowledge that Mars was once inhabited by creatures not altogether different from ourselves...

The dark penninsula on the globe above is called Syrtis Major. It is a flood volcanic region on the south-east corner of Arabia. South of Syrtis is the main Southern Highlands. The Hellas Basin is near the bottom of the globe.

The Mars Face is located among the Cydonia Mensae, a fragmented section of the northern Arabian penninsula. The area is east of Acidalia Planitia, a vast expanse of lowland, dark and strangely eroded. Cydonia is also a lowland. The Face is a mound approximately 1000 meters high, two kilometers long and 1.5 kilometers wide.

Acidalia is the dark area in the center of the globe below; Arabia is the light area to the east of Acidalia. Cydonia is the dark area just north of Arabia...