A New Theory About the Monolith: Weâre the Aliens
Credit.Photo illustration by Mike McQuade
By Jody Rosen
Published Dec. 28, 2020Updated Jan. 8, 2021
The desert of southeastern Utah is a wilderness of flat-topped mesas, jutting buttes and plunging canyons. It is a fantastical landscape, the kind of scenery that pulls your thoughts toward things not quite of this earth. Indigenous people from the region have told stories of deities who formed the mountains by sweeping rocks through a hole in the heavens, and of warrior gods who stomped the topography into existence with their mighty footfalls. Other local legends hold that the desert is haunted by screaming ghosts or stalked by a phantom wolf. The area is known for U.F.O. sightings, and its arid terrain, dotted with crimson sandstone outcroppings, has often been likened to Mars. Since 2001, a group advocating the human settlement of Mars has maintained a research center outside a small town called Hanksville, where crews live