In article <RkfUf.19543$5B4.3097@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net>, 
manic_mandy@hotmail.com says...

In news:1143015559.032743.142880@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com,
ianparker2@gmail.com <ianparker2@gmail.com> typed:

The only natural process I know of that would cause the top surface
to bake into a shell is the presence of liquid water and the heat of
the sun (rather like one would fire clay in a kiln to make pottery).
If that's the case it means the interior subsidence has been caused
by ice melting underneath as a result of interior warming over a
relatively short period. If one interprets
it that way it does of course indicate the presence of water, ice
beneath
the surface and of course heat acting on the surface and interior of
the planet.

I am prepared to believe there was liquid water at some point. Indeed
the channels on Mars do indeed show this. There are also large regions
on Mars at constant elevation which would indicate a sea which dried
out. Yes I am prepared to accept that.

There are other gases which could do the same thing. What about an
igneous origin with gases traped in lava? What about dissolved gases
under pressure?

If it was an arificial structure where is the rest. The only person
who could have made it would be ET and ET would leave behing VN
technology to maintain it constantly.

This is the point. ET would have installed VN machines in the Egyption
desert and kept the Pyramids and the Sphinx in tip top condition.

Well I don't agree there because if there was for example a major disaster
on our planet that made it uninhabitable for thousands or even millions of
years such as an Ice age or a major collision that totally destroyed the
atmosphere, something on a cosmic scale basically. If our technology was
sufficiently advanced enough and we had warning that such an event was going
to occur we would look for a means of saving a remnant of humankind, either
underground or on another planet in our solar system that we could terraform
or adapt in some way.

If at a time in the long distant past both Mars and the Earth contained life
and were inhabitable, but some sort of disaster occurred which made Mars
uninhabitable, it is possible the remnants of the people of Mars would have
moved to the Earth.

Of course what would happen with only a small handful of survivors
struggling to survive on an alien planet (in this case the Earth) is a great
deal of the technology they brought with them would eventually breakdown and
be impossible to maintain and as generations went by they would lose
knowledge, because survival would be the main priority.

Bearing in mind practically all our knowledge and even technological
advancement is now reliant on electronic data storage which would be
completely inaccessible without computers (or electricity for that matter),
and these things are wholly reliant on our huge industrial technological
base for their maintenance, one can see that our technology is incredibly
vulnerable and would be worthless and totally unsustainable without a
manufacturing industry because ever piece of technology we have relies on
something else and there are at this moment in time people living at
technological levels synonymous with every stage in human history and
Capitalism works like a great big machine across the entire planet pushing
technology forward, but it still relies on the cheap labour of people who
live in the most primitive and impoverished conditions and is still
essentially based on slavery and progress is reliant on procreation, the
breeding of more workers to feed the queen ant

Which of course leads on the simple fact the only technology that is capable
of lasting millions and possibly even billions of years without an
infrastructure i.e. people to work sustain "advanced technology" and other
resources is *Stone age technology* and what one sees on Mars, if indeed
these structures are artificial is exactly what one would expect to see on a
planet that was once inhabited by intelligent beings but underwent some form
of cataclysm.

The reason they never left robots to maintain the pyramids or if they did
they have long since rusted away to dust is the fact you can't maintain
technology without people, and technology as we know it is still reliant on
human infrastructure and is in our World a result of a Capitalist Feudal
system, and the whole tower of Babel is reliant on every other part, and we
still have people living in the stone age, we have to have some people
living in the stone age, because they create the resources for the next
stage of development in the system and so on.

But ultimately the only technology that can sustain millions of years is
made of stone and of course it could be argued the main reason we assume the
ancients were primitive is because only stones can withstand against the
sands of time.

This of course the lesson and legacy that the ancients have left us and it
is why we still use stones to mark our graves, we have always used Stones to
mark the graves and the graves tell us that no matter how brilliant an
amazing we think we are, we are only dust and destined to make the same
mistakes again and again inspite of the messages in the stones. We can't
regard ourselves as advanced until be truely undertand the message in the
stones. And if we were really that advanced and aware of the trancience of
what we have, we would be building more Pyramids, Problem is we don't seem
to be advanced enough to have work this out yet. OTOH the ancients obviously
were :)

-- 
Amanda

We have remnants of civilisations upon this planet, of which we know
very little.
Tiahuanco, the Olmecs, Yonaguni, Nan Madol and there are various
things in Africa that seems out of place, that are left behind.
Easter Island has the story of an advanced race that suddenly left -
perhaps that is some clue as to why... In this case, the possibility
of them being contaminated with some unknown disease, that for their own
safety they had to leave quickly.
With Mars, I don't think you should automatically discount the possibility
of life being there, a long time ago - if it had the climate to support
life. Buried beneath the dust could be much more than we can ever
imagine.
We should keep the possibility open, so that we don't automatically
close our minds to what was possible, then.
If the suitable climate wasn't there in the first place - then, I'll say
the chances of there ever being life there, was virtually nil.

Harvey