Using Google Earth to Find Ancient Cities 127
An anonymous reader writes "A story in the online site of the Aussie science mag Cosmos discusses how archaeologists are using sophisticated satellite images to find previously undiscovered cities. What 's really cool is how some are simply using Google Earth — and discovering all sorts of previously unknown sites!"
Work underwater? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Work underwater? (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine the submarine hunting possibilities! No way the military has not at least investigated the technology...
First time... (Score:5, Interesting)
they did this in 1992 (Score:5, Interesting)
they found a biblical city called ubar in oman this way, by tracing the minute traces left by ancient caravan roads only visible by certain radars on a huge scale
no lost ark, but apparently this is where all that weird stuff called frankincense came from
Michael Crichton had the idea in 1980's Congo (Score:5, Interesting)
Find the city? From satellite pictures?
"Yes," she said. "And I found it."
Re:Work underwater? (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) (Score:2, Interesting)
"SRTM acquired enough data during its ten days of operation to obtain the most complete near-global high-resolution database of the Earth's topography."
The data is very accurate and they released a version of the data to the public. Apparently, there is a much more accurate classified version of the data. I'm sure they could find all sorts of things with this database.
Note, they also used the ground-zero/oceans to calibrate the device on every orbit of the earth which means it doesn't penetrate into the water.
Re:It's laugably easy! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Work underwater? (Score:4, Interesting)
Less glorious than it sounds, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Archaeological investigations these days tend to be for emergency purposes. Or in layman's terms, someone's building a motorway through an iron age hill (as in Ireland), or someone found a Roman bathhouse while pile driving the foundations for an office block. To be fair the latter shouldn't happy as archaeologists are normally called in to do a preliminary investigation before construction, at least in archaeological sensitive places such as London, Paris etc. It's pretty hard to get money for pure archaeology now. Mostly because governments would rather fund other, more pragmatic research fields and secondly because modern archaeologists are a squeamish bunch - if something's sat in situ for two millennia without any problems it can afford to wait a decade or more until adequate funding and a conservation strategy are in place. Nowadays most of the glory is going to the geophys guys and not Indiana Jones.
For this reason any methods which can provide any insight, no matter how small, are gaining ground. Really, despite what most people think of archaeologists we're not treasure hunters. We're trying to piece together the past piece by piece. What we're looking for is not lost cities, but rather more mundane artefacts like field boundaries, foundations, lost turnpike roads between settlements etc. Google Earth maybe good at this sort of thing, maybe even for smaller structures too and maybe very handy when trying to piece together larger landscapes. You're probably not going to find Eldorado though.
Ley lines and dowsing rods (Score:3, Interesting)
The people I work for are somewhat floofy new-age spiritualists. During my first week at this job, they had some 'feng-shuei' person over with a pair of straight metal rods with little right-angle bends at the ends for handles - "dowsing rods" - to detect where the "magnetic ley lines" of the building were, and thus how to align the furniture. Said person would walk around the building, "dowsing rods" in hand, and every so often then would swing together, indicating that they had passed over a "magnetic ley line". Needless to say I was highly suspicious of the accuracy of such crude equipment and methods in detecting such subtle energies. After watching this for some time, the new-age consultant person finally left, and gave her "dowsing rods" to my boss to keep. I asked the boss if I could see the "dowsing rods", and she said sure, but what will I do with them, I don't know how to use them.
So I held them out parallel in front of me like the floofy new-age consultant had, stared at them intently, and - voila! The rods crossed! I relaxed my gaze and they became parallel again. I stared intently again and the rods crossed again. My boss was amazed! How was I doing that, she asked. And I replied, "I'm tilting my hands ever so slightly."
She was... disenchanted, I suppose is the word. Though it doesn't seem to have dissuaded her from similar beliefs, such as her fear of "EMFs... or EMRs or ELFs or whatever the bad ones are", coming out of the wiring in her bedroom. I guess some people just don't care to grok real physics, and prefer to see magic dangers and health-improving furniture arrangement strategies in this spooky electromagnetism stuff.
Re:satellite imagery (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Looking for the Great Race (Score:3, Interesting)
At least he got Australia right.
Re:Less glorious than it sounds, but... (Score:3, Interesting)