Posted on 05/14/2014 6:00:04 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The number of identified archaeological sites in the Middle East has been tripled by an outdated technology that could not be replicated today—Cold War satellite photographs.
The Corona Atlas of the Middle East, unveiled last week in the United States, has added some 10,000 sites to the 4,500 previously known archaeological sites between Egypt and Iran.
The photographs, taken mostly in the 1960s for a project managed by the CIA, captured the landscape of the region before it was substantially altered by the spread of modern cities, agricultural development, and the construction of dams and other infrastructure.
“Some of these sites are gigantic and they were completely unknown,” said Dr. Jesse Casana of the University of Arkansas, who outlined the project at a meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “We can see roads and canals. We have a real way to look across the Middle East and see how it was connected.”
The biggest sites, he said, are in Syria and Turkey and cover more than 120 acres.
Although modern satellites provide clearer photographs, they cannot show what has been covered over since the original Corona photographs. The photographs were usually taken in early morning or late afternoon when the low-lying sun would bring into relief mounds typical of archaeological sites...
The photographs that have now been released are confined to sites in the Middle East, particularly from Mesopotamia—the northern area linking today’s Iran with the Mediterranean coast—a major cradle of ancient civilization...
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
1960s CIA photos show ancient ‘roads and canals’ [Corona satellite / APCorona satellite / AP]
Corona Atlas of the Middle East
http://corona.cast.uark.edu/index.html
August 19, 1960: first midair recovery of a capsule returning from orbit. A C-119J Flying Boxcar recovers the return capsule from the Corona spy satellite Discoverer 14, which contains the first spy photographs of the Soviet Union taken from space. USAF Photo.
Amazing site!
Corona Image of Stepnogorsk Bioweapons Facility
Soviet Anthrax Factory at Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan
It even shows the way to San Jose.. And Yes .. All roads did lead to Roma once upon a time.
As to the Yellow Brick road.. Ehhh...
One of the documentary shows on cable has a woman who works with sattelite photos in Egypt. She has identified a lot of sites, many of them which appear to be unknown pyramids.
The problem is getting permits and the time it will take to dig at hundreds of sites.
Why isn't this an option?
The archival value is incalculable, and who knows what surprises a few million "unprofessional" eyes can discover?
Dissemination of digital copies over the internet is virtually costless and with modern PC computers practical for even the largest uncompressed files.
The Mongol invasions destroyed so much.
That Atlas is really cool.
Good idea.
I think we had a topic or two about her a few years ago.
It is. May be a few more new topics in there.
Great idea. Disperse this across the Net. The one thing we’ve learned is that intelligence and creativity, once the gatekeepers are knocked out of the way, is very, very broad.
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