Other lunar ‘sites’

Numerous other parts of the moon have been the subject of speculation. The VGL organisation maintains a website devoted to locating anomalous features on the lunar surface and the Ukrainian Research Institute of Anomalous Phenomena, based in Kharkov, has a lunar study programme. Some of these depend heavily on unsustainable hypotheses about structures on the lunar surface ‘revealed’ in photographs from the Apollo landings. These photographs, claiming to show glass domes in various states of collapse (and, by implication, extremely ancient), have been over-enhanced on computers and show little more than various lens and lighting effects. However, the efforts of Fleming, Arkhipov and their colleagues in Kharkov mean that the surface of the moon is subject to intense scrutiny and constant analysis. None of the proposed sites have revealed convincing evidence for artificiality, including the supposed ‘bridge’ in the Mare Crisium, first reported in 1953.

Considerably less easy to evaluate are the claims of David Hatcher Childress, a prolific fringe author whose publications range from monographs on anti-gravity to lost cities of Lemuria, from man-made UFOs to ‘free energy’. His claims include not only the ubiquitous pyramids and domes (which are usually the central peaks in impact craters) but also tracks left by automated ‘mining drones’ (usually the tracks of boulders thrown by meteoric impacts), platforms or terraces, a ‘pond’, cigar-shaped objects (drawn from UFO mythology) and others. Needless to say, these claims depend on a special way of looking at the photographs: many are so grainy that more than a pinch of faith is needed to see what Childress sees. None would stand scrutiny as aerial photographs of archaeological features. This is not to dismiss them out of hand, merely a recognition that the quality of the data is frequently too poor to draw any meaningful conclusions from them, either in support or in refutation of the hypotheses.

The trend of technological advance is in favour of the sceptic. As photography and surveying techniques increase in quality, what were thought to be features (interpreted by eager lunar site hunters), turn out to be tricks of the light or of the human imagination. Ambiguity is reduced with technological advance: this is bad news for the Bad Archaeologists.

This page was last updated on 19 August 2007
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and James Doeser