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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."
To post this on the web? Potential for grave robbers is incredible in that area. And those may be extremely interesting from an archeological point of view.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
From the "confirmation photo" in TFA, all I was able to confirm is that... yes, there are rocks in Saudi Arabia.
If you find the ark, don't look in it. Seriously, don't look into it.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
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
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.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Dammit, the new slashcode ate my link.
No more a tags?
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200904/desktop.archeology.htm
There's the link.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Revered as both are by Muslims, the prophet, Muhammad, is not the same as Allah. You're confusing Islam with the nonsense that is Christian dogma.
If you're aiming for self-righteously arrogant, at least get your facts straight.
As for "making a buck off him", that doesn't apply to providing an actual service. If you fake evidence of historical fact then yeah you're going to hell. Otherwise, you're just another businessman selling t-shirts and key chains.
Wonder how well this is going to go with the Saudi government. They are pretty touchy about archaeology that pre-dates the Islamic era. For those earlier times, they use the term, IIRC, "time of ignorance" and are reluctant to allow too much knowledge about past times, especially if it is something more advanced, such as a great trading city. I have read about (and the reference escapes me now) where they were ok as long as the research stayed obscure (journals) but once it became more widely know (i.e. popular press), they started to cut off access to the sites. A "treasure trove" might contradict "ignorance".