Giant Archaeological Trove Found Via Google Earth

An anonymous reader writes "Using detailed satellite imagery available through Google Earth, Australian researchers have discovered what may be tombs that are thousands of years old in remote stretches of Saudi Arabia (abstract). 'Kennedy scanned 1240 square kilometers in Saudi Arabia using Google Earth. From their birds-eye view he found 1977 potential archaeological sites, including 1082 "pendants" — ancient tear-drop shaped tombs made of stone. According to Kennedy, aerial photography of Saudi Arabia is not made available to most archaeologists, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to fly over the nation. "But, Google Earth can outflank them," he says. Kennedy confirmed that the sites were vestiges of an ancient life — rather than vegetation or shadow - by asking a friend in Saudi Arabia, who is not an archaeologist, to drive out to two of the sites and photograph them. By comparing the images with structures that Kennedy has seen in Jordan, he believes the sites may be up to 9000 years old, but ground verification is needed."

Comments

Content-free article

[jpvlsmv]

Having RTFA, there is absolutely no content in there.

There's no example photograph of what they saw through google earth (just an inscrutable picture of a pile of rocks), nothing about the history of why ancient peoples would have built this pattern of structure, not even a link to Wikipedia about anything.

Ok, well, they do link to google.com/earth, but seriously, could they have written less content?

--Joe

Re:Was it smart?

[Sechr Nibw]

If they are over 9000 (*sigh*) years old

Really not sure why you are sighing

I'm guessing that it's a sigh related to the meme of [POWER LEVEL] OVER 9000!!!!!11!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMHTK15Pik
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Over_9000

Re:"Tear drop shaped structures"

[Red Flayer]

Get some knowledge, bro.

There have been analogs at other sites that have been explored and have been discovered to have been tombs.

Here's a nice article that explains a lot, with mention of these tombs, and tombs like them, near the end. The pictures help make it obvious that these could not be naturally occurring.

Pendant tombs (including crescent, teardrop, and keyhole tombs) are a pretty well-known phenomenon.

Re:"Tear drop shaped structures"

[Red Flayer]

Dammit, the new slashcode ate my link.

No more a tags?

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200904/desktop.archeology.htm

There's the link.