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     There is evidence that Mars was once wetter and more like Earth.  In fact one can see ancient river beds and ocean floors and channels where liquid water once ran.  

     Geologists agree, that what is striking about the channels is that they should only have been caused by floods involving enormous quantities of water. These floods flowed from the southern hemisphere into the northern hemisphere at a very rapid rate. 

     Teardrop shaped islands strongly suggests that Mars may once have experienced floods of biblical proportions.  

In fact, recent rover missions to the red planet have confirmed evidence of the one time existence of salty oceans.  So where there may have once been water, there may have once been life.

     One of the mysteries about Mars is that it has two distinct areas.  The heavily cratered southern hemisphere, and the smooth un-cratered northern hemisphere.  The Line of Dichotomy separates the two hemispheres.  

93 percent of Mars's craters are in the Southern hemisphere.  The northern hemisphere is much lower in altitude, by several kilometers than it's southern counterpart.

     There is a theory to explain these traits of Mars.  It's called the Exploded Planet Hypothesis.  It states that the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter was once a planet, and that Mars was its moon.  The parent planet exploded, pelting the southern hemisphere of Mars with uncountable fragments, which created the heavy cratering in the southern hemisphere, and the Line of Dichotomy by leaving the northern hemisphere unscathed.  The fragments that missed Mars then dispersed into space to create the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. 

     When looking at the Valles Marineris, one can see that the internal distress caused by the impact of subsequent fragments may have resulted in the formation of the Tharsis Bulge in the opposite hemisphere, which is literally a bulge in the crust of Mars.  

This may have also caused Mars to burst its seams along one quarter of its circumference, which may have formed the chasm of the Valles Marineris, a canyon that makes our own Grand Canyon here on Earth look like just a hole in the ground.  This could also have caused much of the oceans and atmosphere of Mars to be stripped away.

     Another point to consider when looking at the sophistication of these alleged monuments, is that a culture that would be capable of building such advanced things might also be capable of space travel.  And if they were capable of space travel, surely they would have stopped here on Earth, their neighboring planet.  And if they did stop here, then there should be some trace of them left behind.

     The problem with this scenario, according to the best evidence available to researchers, is that we're looking at a civilization that would have had to exist tens of thousands of years ago.  So is there evidence here on Earth of an ancient high-tech culture?  What some might refer to as Atlantis?  It appears there may be.  

      According to conventional wisdom, the Sphinx of Giza was built around 2500 B.C by the Pharaoh Khafre, created in his image.   However this fact is currently the topic of hot debate in the scientific community.

     Some claim it does not even look like Khafre.  Forensic expert Frank Domingo of the New York Police Department has shown that the face of the Sphinx, and the face seen on signed statues of Khafre, is not the same person.

     The Sphinx clearly has a more distinct Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon aspect, which is lacking in the statues known to be of Kahfre.  So the fact that the Sphinx was built at the time of Kahfre is suspect.

     Dr. Robert Schoch is a tenured Associate Professor of Science and Mathematics, in the Division of Science and Mathematics, of the College of General Studies, of Boston University.  

He's also an expert in the erosion of soft stones such as the limestone that the Sphinx is made of.  He has a Ph. D. in Geology and Geophysics from Yale University, and a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from the George Washington University in Washington D.C.  What he found when he looked at the Sphinx, was erosion patterns that indicate the Sphinx must be vastly older than anyone previously thought.

      Wind/sand erosion presents a profile of sharp-edged horizontal channels selectively scoured out from the softer layers of the affected rock, which the Sphinx exhibits does exhibit. 

     But the Sphinx, and the wall enclosing the Sphinx, are heavily weathered and eroded by another form of erosion.  This particular type erosion is a couple of meters thick in some places.  What we see is a vertical rolling and undulating profile.  

This is congruent with precipitation induced weathering brought about by torrential rain beating down upon a limestone structure for thousands of years.  Which begs the obvious question; Rain, in a desert?  

By looking at a combination of textual references and historical extrapolations, it's possible to prove that the Sphinx was covered with sand for about 3300 of the 4500 years that have passed since Khafre's time.  So the rain had to fall at least before then.  This coupled with the forensic facial profile argues heavily against Kahfre's involvement in the construction of the Sphinx.  So who built it?

     To account for this kind of precipitation induced weathering, you have to go back to before 10,000 B.C. to find a wet enough climate in Egypt. 

Egypt just hasn't had the amount of torrential rainfall on the Giza plateau since the time of Khafre that is needed for this kind of weathering.  The science of paleo-climatology shows that Egypt had its last period of wet climate between 15,000 and 7,000 B.C.  That dates the Sphinx at some where between 5000 to 7000 years old conservatively.  Which means that the Sphinx had to have been built at a time when nobody on planet Earth was suppose to be capable of producing anything of this magnitude, there's no other civilization that we know of to give credit to.  

     But could there be a connection, a provable connection, between the Monuments of Earth, and the Monuments of Mars.  Well, let's take a closer look.