Archaeology breakthrough: How NASA satellite exposed 8,000-year-old 'lost civilisations'

Express UK ^ | Monday, June 29, 2020 | Callum Hoare

[SunkenCiv]

The small communities were hiding in the overgrown landscape of the Middle East, but scientists say they hold vital clues to ancient civilisations that once inhabited this area. By combining spy-satellite photos obtained in the Sixties with modern satellite images and digital maps of Earth's surface, the researchers created a new method for mapping large-scale patterns of human movement. The approach, used to map sites spanning eight millennia across 23,000km of northeastern Syria, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jason Ur, an archaeologist at Harvard University and study co-author, said in 2012: "Traditional archaeology goes straight to the biggest features - the palaces or cities - but we tend to ignore the settlements at the other end of the social spectrum.

"The people who migrated to cities came from somewhere, we have to put these people back on the map." ...

The satellite-based method analysed a distinctive reflective signature left in the soil by human activity, known as anthrosols.

Formed from organic waste and decayed mud-brick architecture, anthrosols consists of higher levels of organic matter and have a finer texture and lighter appearance than undisturbed soil.

Study co-author, Bjoern Menze, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was able to spot these anomalies thanks to his day job of identifying tumours in clinical images.

[ThanhPhero]

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