UNC Prof and Google Earth = new archaeological sites

Many people have been excited about the idea of using Google's satellite photos to discover new things about the earth -- and some academics are already doing this in a professional capacity.

Dr. Madry became interested in seeing what arcaheological sites looked like from the air and seeing if new ones could be discovered using the satellite photos. So he first "trained" his eye by selecting a number of sites and seeing what they had in common when viewed from the sky. Then, after he had a good understanding of the concept, he ran a test on a region he didn't know.

He correctly pinpointed known sites AND came up with some new ones; sites that had been already marked as "of interest" but hadn't been explored.

The key here is that he first trained his eye by looking at a lot of known sites.

Interesting story.
www.newsobserver.com...

Originally posted by Byrd
He correctly pinpointed known sites AND came up with some new ones; sites that had been already marked as "of interest" but hadn't been explored.

This is so exciting!

I was inspired to download google earth, so maybe I can join the hunt!

Wow... technology...

Good find, Byrd

That would be great, but It is very difficult to find anything where the google satilight pictures are in low quality... but I would assume that it will get better over time.

Fascinating, I'll have to try and link to the story about that Spanish man who found ruins whilst looking at his house on Google Earth. Good Find!

Google Earth's discussion board has a lot of lists associated with it, including links to archaeological sites, so you can see what they look like from the air. I remember seeeing someone posting on ATS pictures of a retired missle site, asking if it had some occult significance -- the GoogleEarth users identified it very quickly and had the coordinates of it and other similar sites.