Enhancements copyright (C) Marcia L. Peters, all rights reserved

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Circumscribed Mound with Dolmens and Ashlars

Latitude 39.09°
Longitude 194.46°
Traverse across sharp contacts and steep slope in E Phlegra Montes
NASA Catalog:  http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/html/fha009/fha00972.html

Click on any image below for a full-resolution jpeg image of the same area

MOC Image Viking 
Context
Image
Viking 
Color 
Context 
Image
Resolution 2.89 m






Enhancements

This feature is about 1680 m top to bottom x 850 m across the "ball of the foot" area.

Commentary by Greg Stockton

This is not a natural formation.  At the very first glance, I said, "Battlements."  Logic tells me that this is unlikely.  A much better defensive formation could be found on higher ground.  Also, we would probably be dealing with high tech warfare, which would render such a formation obsolete.  Still, someone went to a great deal of trouble to dig a deep trench and mound the excavated earth into a perfectly shaped wall.  No chance, none at all, that this could occur naturally.  The wall is an unbroken unity of uniform height.  How could this be natural?  The trench follows the inside of the wall all the way around without varying.  If by
some miracle nature managed to form the wall like this, where did the trench come from?  It would have to parallel the wall on the same side on both sides of the main structure, e.g. east of each wall, or west of each wall.  This does not even address the problem of having the trench seamlessly follow the wall on the short sides as well.  The trench is partially filled in on the right side.  Ergo, the prevailing wind blows left to right in this picture.  Note the striated lines on the barren soil to the left of the formation.  This indicates wind scouring.  The west wall protects its adjoining trench from the wind, but the opposite trench is
unprotected, and thus partly filled.  The ground outside the structure on the east is unstriated, indicating that the eastern wall has provided a partial protection from the west wind.  As to the overall shape of the structure, it is not perfectly symmetrical, but is very close.  It does resemble a footprint, but without toes.

Looking to the inside, notice that a number of respectably sized stones are clustered in several groups.  The outside ground has no similar rocks or shapes.  Are we looking at a Martian Stonehenge?  The round formation near the heel/instep junction is particularly suspicious.  Are those dolmens and ashlars?  Recall that Stonehenge itself is circumscribed by a similar trench and mound.  I suspect a religious or philosophical motivation for the origin of this entire design.

This cluster of dark objects from the lower-left edge of the "footprint" is ~25 m in diameter -- not unlike Earth's own Stonehenge.