Before the invention of the telescope, Mars was just another of the "wanderers" that traveled through the sky. Its only distinguishing characteristic was its reddish color, which produced associations with war and fire. The Chaldeans called it Nergal, their god of the dead and battles. To the Persians it was the Celestial Warrior, and to the Greeks it was Ares, meaning "disaster" or "vengeance." The Romans named it Mars after their god of war.

The first drawings of Mars which show any surface features that correspond to real ones were made by Christiaan Huygens in 1659 and 1672. One sketch clearly shows Syrtis Major, while the Martian ice cap at the south pole is visible in another drawing.

Huygens was able to see such details with inferior telescopes because Earth and Mars are not always the same distance apart. Every twenty-six months Earth overtakes Mars in its orbit; especialy good...