Immanuel Velikovsky opines that the loss of Martian water was much more recent and due to a near approach of a wandering body with a greater gravity that stripped away the atmosphere and most water. Worlds in Collision, written in 1950.
Well, he was wrong. To strip the atmosphere and water such a passage would have caused massive disruption and there would be visible evidence (since there was no water or atmosphere to erode it away...)
However, when the moon initially formed it was so close to the Earth that all the gasses and dust on its surface were vacuumed off. Proximity to the Earth is why it became tidally locked and why the nearside is so much different than the farside. If a near passage stripped Mars there would be features visible to indicate that.