Spy Satellites Reveal Ancient Lost Empires in Afghanistan

Spy Satellites Reveal Ancient Lost Empires in Afghanistan
(livescience.com)

Yet another example of satellites uncovering the lost infrastructure of ancient civilizations.

Spy satellite imagery is revealing lost Silk Road outposts and the traces of vanished empires in the forbidding desert regions of Afghanistan, new research reveals.

The new archaeological insights come from decades of imagery collected by commercial and spy satellites and drones, Science reported. Among the finds: huge caravanserai, or outposts used by Silk Road travelers for millennia, and subterranean canals that were buried by the desert sands.

Most of these aren't as dramatic as the cover image used in the article, such as cemeteries or irrigation canals but one researcher expects thousands of such sites to be revealed along the Silk Road using satellite imagery.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Caravans could only travel about 12 miles in a day. Thought it be a little higher than that.

a reply to: pavil

That surprised me too, they must have had some bloody stubborn mules or camels.


Cool stuff Blackmarketeer, ta for sharing!

In Afghan terrain, it is no shocker caravans could only travel 12 miles. Uphill, downhill, around the bend, through a valley of bandits. And without rubber tread to make it easier.
The lost caravanserais of the Silk Road in Afghanistan have recently been uncovered using satellite imagery. Here, a satellite image of a 17th century carvanserai, or waystation.
Credit: Digitalglobe, Inc.

Aerial imagery of Tar-o-Sar, where remains of an ancient Parthian civilization have been unearthed
Credit: Digitalglobe, Inc.

Thats cool, they found something else in Saudi Arabia earlier this year as well with satellite. They claim similar things, that it was likely a possible ancient civilization. But if you ask me, they look like cratered out land as landing sites of Sayan modules like in DBZ.

Mysterious gates: 400 ancient stone structures on the edge of volcanoes discovered in Saudi Arabia

The gates "are stone-built, the walls roughly made and low," Kennedy wrote in his paper, which will appear in the November issue of Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. "The gates appear to be the oldest man-made structures in the landscape," he mentioned in his paper.

"Identification, mapping and preliminary interpretation imply an early date in the sequence of the works—perhaps the very earliest—but no obvious explanation of their purpose can be discerned," he wrote.

"Gates are found almost exclusively in bleak, inhospitable lava fields with scant water or vegetation, places seemingly amongst the most unwelcoming to our species."

These structures differ in size. The smallest gate extends about 43 feet (13 meters), while the longest measures 1,699 feet (518 m). The gates were discovered through satellite surveys and they look similar to structures that are found in the Middle East.

Other prominently studied structures are "kites," which were animal traps, and "wheels." These structures are often found on top of the gates, suggesting the gates pre-date the stone structures.

"The Works known as Kites—which are certainly animal traps, may be as old as 9,000 years before present in some cases and there is one example of a Kite overlying a Gate—i.e. the Gate is older. So Gates may be up to or more than 9,000 years old, which takes one back to the Neolithic (Age)," Kennedy told Newsweek.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

I could spend hours just looking at those ruin's Tar-o-sar, you can make out a few building's in what was once a city inside the inner wall below the palace or fort in the center, I wonder if that site fell to invasion, economic collapse as the silk road trade diminished with the fall of Parthia and later Rome or climactic alteration's as I would imagine even with trade that site must have needed a lot of food that could only be grown locally in what is today arid and inhospitable terrain.

It is a shame that today we know Afghanistan only for the lunatic cult that ruled the nation, it's lawless bandit's and the ongoing wars there because in fact as that site show's it was once one of the seat's of human civilization and is very important in the history of human culture, important to each and every one of us in this world today in fact and yet the like's of the sick minded Taliban wanted to destroy these site's utterly and to totally erase the past and traces of the pre-Islamic people there ancestors and before them the mongol hoard's conquered and butchered (While of course they are also descended from those very conquered peoples so were destroying there own personal history but not a history that belonged to them alone so they were trespassing upon the greater human history).

Once it was a place full of learning, Buddhist and Zoroastrian's, Christian and Hindu and many other faith's lived, worked and shared in that ancient culture and while there were undoubtedly always fierce hill tribe's and bandit's even back to before the time Alexander made it part of his short lived empire it was immensely important to the history of the world - not only grown from the silk road but perhaps even older than that trade and one of the reason's the silk road began in the first place.

Climate does change though and much of this desert was once irrigated lush farmland, a lot of it artificially irrigated before the mongol hoard and then the Islamic invaders swept through but of course rivers change course, invaders smash dike's, dam's and irrigation channels (as they did in Mesopotamia as well) and other factors alter the climate of regions over time.

It is also very sad, can you imagine the bustling bazaar and the many family's, there lives and forgotten day to day existence, the gardens with the fruit tree's and quiet pool's of water that once decorated some of them, there forgotten delicacy's and art's, history's and poetry's, there loves and fear's all now covered by the sand's of time from just that one site alone like some mandala made by the monk's of far away Tibet to the greatest intricacy only to then be swept away as if it had never been.

a reply to: LABTECH767
To be honest, at least we have enough knowledge about those Afghan outposts and hopefully soon more to come. My concern is, wtf kind of people would build those stone gates in Saudi Arabia in what damn near may as well be Venus?? They could not have been very pleasant at all, I mean there was hardly any vegetation! Unless those are the modern creations of runaway rogue AI bots building their robot city and its all a coverup.

Seriously though, that was even more inhospitable than those Afghan outposts. Who the hell would maintain a presence there?

a reply to: worldstarcountry

The whole Arabian peninsula has an extremely long history, maybe even dating back to the last ice age were human's with fully modern brains may have had settlements at time's when the land was not so arid, a defeated people may flee to a place they think they are safe and build defensive wall's or indeed they could indicate and even earlier lost chapter that we do not understand.

Saudi Arabia has it's more than fair share of mysteries.

People also tend to see things as slow linear progressions but we know that earthquakes happen and that during the course of human history huge land upheavals have occurred and such may have happened in that very location as well.

Then there are religious reason's that are also a possibility for such enigmatic site's, they are at least as fascinating though but to be fair I really do not know enough on them to make any fair comment except that Arabia was once far more populace and had a great many kingdom's and tribes often at war with one another and a great diversity of religion's as well.

I had to remove the last bit I made the error of seeing them as looking like craters they are dome's protruding up form the ground, lava actually flow's over some of these structure's so these thing's were built while those volcano's were active, were they perhaps trying to control the flow of the lava for some reason? but were those volcano's active that recently? - as far as I know Saudi is actually sinking downward very slowly as it separates form Africa though tectonic drift so have they got the right date, were did the magma chamber beneath these structures get it's energy from if they are that recent as or could these be even older site's.


I really have no idea.

Highly fertile volcanic soil, a wetter climate and field boundary's - Agriculture in Arabia long before the Mesopotamian crescent another stick on those spokes of that dated but still standard theory about how, where and when human agriculture may have begun.
Maybe they were even vineyard's.

Is this some specialist archaeological meaning of the word 'gate'? Or maybe American English? To me, a gate is an entrance.

a reply to: LABTECH767
Very peculiar stuff. The video appears to show these occur outside of Medina. That is far enough away from the conflict in the South that I believe a team of explorers could safely travel there to study. I anticipate with excitement some in depth documentation of both these gates and the Afghan outposts.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Good thing spy satellites sympathize with archeaology over
secret technological advances and capabilities.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

It's not because of fighting; it's very hard to get permission from Muslim authorities. They don't want to see huge Hindu or Buddhist religious monuments. It causes unrest. Archaeology is very political, like in Israel.