Space Archaeology 101: The Next Frontier of Exploration
Transcript
Luis Jaime Castillo, Archaeologist & National Geographic Explorer: We are the detectives of the past. And we have to figure out what happened. That is what is fascinating about archaeology.
Luis Jaime Castillo, Archaeologist & National Geographic Explorer: Peru is super special archeologically because this is one of the cradles of civilization. It is where civilization actually arose from nothing.
Sarah Parcak, Archaeologist, National Geographic Explorer & TED Prize Winner: A little over a hundred years ago, Hiram Bingham went to Peru and, relying on local knowledge, found this crumbling city in the middle of the rain forest. At the time, he used state of the art photography equipment to record what was there.
Sarah Parcak, Archaeologist, National Geographic Explorer & TED Prize Winner: It was the first scientific archaeological expedition that National Geographic funded. And in some ways it helped to launch our modern age of archaeology. So the idea of applying new state of the art technology to map sites in Peru feels like a natural extension of what Hiram Bingham did over a hundred years ago.
Luis Jaime Castillo, Archaeologist & National Geographic Explorer: One of the dreams of archaeology has always been to look from above. As drones became available 5 or 6 years ago, archaeologists jumped at this opportunity. Finally we can above our excavations and take a picture that reveals everything that we have seen from below.
Luis Jaime Castillo, Archaeologist & National Geographic Explorer: Now, if you simply go up, up into the space and look down with a camera you can at the same time look down at not one square mile, many square miles and then you can focus on specific items that you think are important.
Sarah Parcak, Archaeologist, National Geographic Explorer & TED Prize Winner: Space archaeology is the study and the use of satellite images for mapping ancient archaeological features and environmental features, by looking at different parts of the light spectrum…
Sarah Parcak, Archaeologist, National Geographic Explorer & TED Prize Winner: We see subtle changes on the Earth's surface caused by what's buried beneath.
Sarah Parcak: And what satellites help us to do is pinpoint areas and we know to within meters exactly where something is from thousands of miles away.
Sarah Parcak, Archaeologist, National Geographic Explorer & TED Prize Winner: We're the generation with all the tools and all the new technologies to be able to map sites and protect them. Using these new technologies, we have a real chance to protect and preserve these sites for future generations.
