Spy Satellites Reveal Ancient Lost Empires in Afghanistan

Last edited Fri Dec 15, 2017, 11:32 PM - Edit history (1)

By Tia Ghose, Associate Editor | December 14, 2017 12:41pm ET

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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.


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.

The archaeological sites are too dangerous to explore in person, so the new mapping effort, which is funded by a $2 million grant from the U.S. State Department, enables researchers to study Afghanistan's archaeological heritage safely, experts said in November at a meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Washington, D.C.

"I'd expect tens of thousands of archaeological sites to be discovered. Only when these sites are recorded can they be studied and protected," David Thomas, an archaeologist at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, who has done remote sensing work in Afghanistan but is not a member of the mapping team, told Science.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/61197-silk-road-outpots-revealed-by-spy-satellites.html?utm_source=notification