As the world became more advanced during the early half of the 20th century, people started turning their heads to the sky and wondering what our distant cousins on Mars were up to. Scientists began studying the seasons on Mars and worried about the Martians living on an obviously dying planet. Dreamers began writing stories about the men of Mars, some portraying them as friendly people, but most writers showed the Martians as a desperate, though highly intelligent, race that was contemplating a takeover of the planet Earth.
With all of this Martian speculation, scientists, professors, and spiritualists began to describe what these Martians might look like in an effort to prepare us for an eventual, face to face, meeting.
1. They Must be Giants
In 1919, The Washington Times, a newspaper that is now known for its conservative, political reporting, published an article about Martians and what they probably looked like.
The author of the article believed that Martians must be a race older than Earthlings, and because the Martian race was older than us, they must also be smarter. Therefore, Martians must have an enormous head to accommodate the much larger brain. The eyes would have to extend out of their heads, like a snail’s, in order to give them a better range of vision because moving a large head about would be troublesome.
Martians also have a sensitive patch of skin on the top of their heads that allows them to communicate telepathically. The creatures have no vocal cords because they would be useless on Mars.
Because of the extremely low gravitational pull on Mars, the Martian is a large being, probably 10 to 12 feet high, and his legs, long and skinny, are useless to him. Martians are so advanced that, instead of walking, they fly from one place to another and rely on machines to do all of their work
Martians have a very large chest to accommodate their lungs which need to pull oxygen from the thin air. Their ears are also very big because sound does not travel very far on Mars. They are covered in white polar fur to protect them from the cold weather on Mars.
Finally, to top off the weirdness, the article states that because the “rare atmosphere conducts odors but poorly… we may expect the man on Mars to have an elephantine nose which goes to the odor, as the odor can’t come to the Martian.”
2. Tobacco Smoking Ants
If we go back to 1906, we will see that scientists and professors had their very own strange views on what Martians must look like. For example, Professor Edward Morse, a curator of Japanese pottery at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, believed that Martians must be giant tobacco smoking ants.
His reasoning was that the canals on Mars proved that Martians were incredible engineers. Their abilities to produce such straight lines that could be seen from Earth showed a likeness to the ants on Earth.
As for the tobacco, Professor Morse believed that the smoke seen on Mars must have been from numerous Martians smoking in one area, because the smoke did not move like a cloud does.
As for the white spots seen on Mars, Professor Morse said:
“Since the appearance of these white spots in Mars corresponded with the period of greatest evaporation, it is conceivable that an intelligence in Mars might utilize the same method which has recently been adopted in Connecticut and Puerto Rico in the raising of tobacco, namely, to protect the fields with white cotton cloth.”
3. Feathered Quasi-Humans
Another newspaper article that was published in 1908 stated that Martians had to be similar to humans, but with one major difference. Because of the extreme weather temperatures on Mars, the quasi-human Martians are covered in feathers. The feathers allow them to remain cool in the hot summer season and warm during Mars’ bitter winters.
The article went on to say that Martians “must have big brains because of their high intelligence, and since almost all creatures with big brains tend to have them forward in their heads near their eyes, these Martians will probably have big, shapely skulls.”
The feathered, big-headed Martians will also be taller than the people on Earth. The lack of atmosphere is to blame for the Martian’s near gigantic size.
4. Tall, Blond, and Skinny
French scholar Edmond Perrier gave the world a very different description of what Martians probably look like. He believed that Martians, as well as the people on other planets, were all generally similar except for some variances due to planetary climate and gravity.
He went on to say that Martians are tall and that they are all blond because “the daylight is less intense” than it is on Earth. Furthermore, “their large, blue eyes, their strong noses, their large ears constitute a type of beauty which we doubtless would not appreciate except as suggesting super-human intelligence.”
Mr. Perrier strongly believed that the blond Martians lived in an intellectual utopia and that they were far superior to humans in their technical abilities.
Professor Lowell, the director of the Flagstaff, Arizona observatory, agreed with Mr. Perrier, and went on to say that, “Quite possibly, the Martian folks are possessed of inventions of which we have not dreamed, and with them electrophones and kinetoscopes are things of a bygone past, preserved as relics of the clumsy contrivances of the simple childhood of the race.”
5. Giant Bats
Could the strange batlike outlines seen on Mars be actual, giant bats?
It was reported in 1909 that some scientists, as well as a few romanticists, believed that Martians were winged beings. The trouble, however, was that these futuristic thinkers could not decide what type of wings the Martians must have. Were they bird wings, butterfly wings, or the leathery wings of bats?
Many early science fiction artists created Martian illustrations with strange flying creatures and flying people, but there was another group of people who believed that Martians did not have wings at all. Instead, those strange outlines seen on Mars were floating cities and airships hovering over the surface of Mars.
Scientists believed that Mars might have flood zones, like on Earth, and that the Martians would simply move into their hovering homes during this time. This explained why the bat-like outlines were not always visible. Martians only used the airships when it was necessary.
6. Muscular Shoveling Giants
Scientists obsessed over images of the canals on Mars. It inspired countless short story writers to theorize what Martian life must be like and it created a rather amusing theory about the people on Mars.
Generally speaking, numerous articles from 1906 to 1922 portrayed Martians as muscle bound giants with shovels in their hands. One article from 1907 theorized that these giant shoveling beings were able to dig up two and a half tons of Martian dirt with each shovelful.
The men of Mars lived intense lives digging in the dirt and building canals so that when the ice melted at the caps during the summer weather, the water flowed through the canals and irrigated the land.
What really puzzled the scientists, however, was the Martian ability to make the water flow up hills and mountains. Certainly these brawny giants had the brains to match their biceps, and had figured out a way to defy the natural laws of gravity on Mars.
7. A Whole Lot of Hot Air
One of the weirdest theories about the appearance of aliens was reported in 1904. An article in The Washington Times reported that a Sir William Ramsay believed that Martians were so ancient and so intelligent that they gave up their physical forms long ago. Martians became conscious, intelligent clouds of gases. They have the ability to travel and communicate by thought. They might even be able to take on different shapes in their smokey form.
While the article does not tackle the question of why these super-beings don’t think themselves to Earth for a visit, it does put forth the idea that perhaps humans are not advanced enough for the gaseous Martians to bother with. Or it could very well be that our habitat would prove harmful to the cloud beings who would prefer to remain in the comfort of their home planet.
8. Swedenborg’s Martian
Emanuel Swedenborg published a book, “Life on Other Planets,” in 1758 that detailed his conversations with beings from Mars, as well as from our moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus.
Swedenborg’s descriptions and beliefs about Martians were being floated around in scientific circles during the early half of the 20th century. Swedenborg claimed that the Martian he saw had a face that was “like the faces of the inhabitants of our earth, but the lower part black, not from a beard, for he had none, but from a blackness in place of a beard.” In other words, Martians are two-toned.
The two-toned Martian also works well with the theory that Martians may have similarities to either Earth’s salamanders or lizards, and there were a number of scientists who theorized that Martians were either amphibious, water loving beings or desert loving reptilians.
9. The Gill People
Yet another theory about Martians was that they had gills. You see, long ago Mars was covered in large oceans. Eventually those oceans dried up, but the gilled Martians still needed water to live and frolic. So the canals were built and the gill people were able to continue their existence on Mars and not have to gather up the resources necessary to invade Earth.
In 1920, it was theorized that Martians had bad eyesight and even worse hearing. It was assumed that Martians wore powerful eyeglasses and had electrical devices attached to their ears so they could hear.
But this was all kind of silly because many of our predecessors already knew that Martians sent messages telepathically. This was supposedly proven in 1908 when psychic Mrs. Smead received a message from Mars. “Tri rure neu infew mare laries en fratuir triuen carmine,” was the message.
Dr. Hyslop, Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, translated the message as, “The man chief ruler’s place in which looks on our earth from Mars.”
10. Just a Bunch of Beavers
By 1930, the belief in humanlike Martians was beginning to dwindle. The scientists of the time felt that maybe there were no humanoid creatures with brains like humans on Mars. Instead, there are fish, lizards, and, amazingly, beavers.
According to one article: “Martian beavers, of course, would not be exactly like those on earth. That they would be furred and water-loving is probable. Their eyes might be larger than those of the earthly beaver because the sunlight is not so strong, and their bodies might be larger because of lesser Martian gravity. Competent digging tools certainly would be provided on their claws. The chest of these Martian beavers would be larger and their breathing far more active, as there is less oxygen in the air on Mars.”
So, instead of Martians with big heads and large chests, scientist transferred those earlier beliefs onto the animals of Mars. Of course, the Martian beavers were responsible for the formation of the canals because of their digging and building of alien beaver dams.
