Ancient sites in Egypt found using satellites


Dr Sarah Parcak, a US Egyptologist has found more than three thousand ancient settlements and more than one thousand tombs using infra-red satellite images. Among the current finds are two pyramids.

These images are taken from satellites orbiting at 700 kilometres above the earth. The camera and lenses are powerful enough to find objects less than one meter in diameter.
Theses amazing images reveal the streets and buildings under the sands.

The ancient Egyptians used mud bricks to build there dwellings, these bricks are much more dense compared with the surrounding soil and sand, allowing the infra-red images to spot them.

There is now so many new sites to excavate and artefacts to be found, enough work for many generations of archaeologists.

This new way of finding ancient sites will no doubt be used in many other countries; it will be very interesting to see the findings. For example South America is a rich ground for ancient civilisations.

Back in 2008 Archaeologists at NASA were looking into the sudden collapse of the Mayan civilisation when they discovered lost cities in the Guatemalan jungles using satellite imagery.

The image below shows the city of Tikal which was discovered deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.

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Francis Pybis