(ORDO NEWS) — Best known in her profession, satellite or “space” archaeologist Sarah Parkak has used satellite imagery to uncover many ancient settlements and lost tombs in Egypt, including several pyramids.
Her team’s most famous finds include the urban network of the lost city of Tanis, the ruined Roman amphitheater at Portus, the ancient city of Dacia in what is now Romania, and fossils of prehistoric hominids at the bottom of Lake Kenya using hyperspectral camera data.
Parkak discovered a Viking site in Newfoundland, a ceremonial platform at Petra, and used satellites to create and update a “nationwide plunder map” showing looted tombs throughout Egypt.
Progressive space archeology
Other satellite archaeologists have recently used satellite imagery to discover Mayan roads, wells and temples in the impenetrable jungles of northern Guatemala, a buried pyramid settlement near Cahuachi in Peru, and a lost city in present-day Oman.
“No matter how modern our photographs are,” explains Parkak. “We always go back to any map that has ever been created because it contains information that no longer exists.”
Only by looking at local architecture and landscape changes over millennia can you explore the data-rich satellite imagery that reveals hidden clues on the ground.
In her career, Parkak used NASA radar, for example, to locate the wealthy suburb of Ijtava, the lost capital of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, and confirmed this discovery on earth by analyzing soil samples containing bits of processed amethyst and other materials.
The next step is to create a three-dimensional topographic map of the area, on which you can pinpoint the places where the ancients built hills to avoid the flooding of the Nile.
Despite the use of the most modern methods such as satellite imagery, classical archeology is still an area in which it is important to know history and become familiar with the area and all its characteristics.
As Sarah Parkak says:
“Every discovery in the field of remote sensing is based on hundreds of hours of in-depth research. Before looking at satellite images of a cemetery or a pyramid field, you should know why it should be there. ”
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.