In The Mars Mystery, investigative archaeologist Graham Hancock treats our growing knowledge of Martian topography as a Rosetta Stone we can use to decode mysteries as old as the human imagination. He examines the current landscape of Mars and discovers evidence that the planet was once home to a lush environment of dense atmosphere and flowing rivers, lakes, and oceans. He asks questions, based on growing evidence, that cannot be dismissed: Has Mars ever sustained higher forms of life? How might the secret history of Mars be intertwined with Earth's own past and future?

In his most riveting and revealing book yet, Hancock points to the intriguing possibility that ancient Martian civilization is communicating with us through the remarkable structures it left behind. Megaliths found on the parched shores of Cydonia, a former Martian ocean, mirror the geometrical conventions of the pyramids at Egypt's Giza necropolis. Especially startling is a Sphinx-like structure depicting a face with distinguishable diadem, teeth, mouth, and Egyptian-style headdress. Might there be a connection between the structures of Egypt and those of Mars?

Yet, as intriguing as scientists all over the world find the Cydonian anomalies, NASA continues to dismiss them as a "trick of light." The April 1998 Mars Global Surveyor mission, which Hancock examines in this book, has only further stoked the controversy. In The Mars Mystery, Hancock makes a strong case that NASA is motivated by a lingering Cold War mentality and a fear that evidence of alien life will have destabilizing political, economic, and social consequences. In exploring the traces left by the Martian civilization and the cosmic cataclysm that may have ended it, The Mars Mystery is both an illumination of our ancient past and a warning--which we still have time to heed--about our ultimate fate.