in 1877, Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli began mapping the surface of Mars from the Brera Observatory in Milan, where he served as director. Schiaparelli saw intoxicating landscapes and named the linear features canali: a word that, in Italian, can stand for both natural, geological trenches and manufactured channels. Schiaparelli’s research was championed by Percival Lowell, brother of the Imagist poet Amy Lowell. To assist his new hobby, Lowell bought himself equipment: an observatory built from scratch in Flagstaff, Arizona. He soon released a trilogy of studies: Mars (1895); Mars and its Canals (1906); and Mars as the Abode of Life (1908). His thesis? Schiaparelli’s canals were actually the irrigation channels of an advanced civilization that funneled water from its polar caps in accordance with seasonal demand and a changing climate. Edited, text from Public Domain Review.
