Using images from Google Maps and Google Earth, an Italian programmer stumbled upon the remains of an ancient villa. Images taken by Landsat and IKONOS helped archaeologists find several building sites near Tikal in the Guatemalan rainforest. In India, satellite images have shown evidence of paleo channels in Haryana believed to be the mythical Saraswati.
Archaeologists are now using radar and satellite imagery to explore regions affected by violence and sites which are inaccessible.
Here in Cambodia, the new archaeology has changed the history of a civilization. The low-key Evans, a director of the University of Sydney’s Greater Angkor Project at just 32 years old, has already mapped northern Angkor, another heavily landmined area, from a computer screen in Australia. He has used radar and satellite images to chart its vast network of canals and reservoirs, proving that Angkor was once the largest city in the world, a metropolis consuming an area about the size of present-day Los Angeles. His work also underpins a radical new explanation of why, in the 15th century, the Angkor civilization died out, a finding that holds grave undertones for the megacities of the 21st century.[The Space Archaeologists | Popular Science]
