ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sarah Parcak - Satellite archaeologist + TED Prize winner
Like a modern-day Indiana Jones, Sarah Parcak uses satellite images to locate lost ancient sites. The winner of the 2016 TED Prize, her wish is to protect the world’s shared cultural heritage.

Why you should listen

There may be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of undiscovered ancient sites across the globe. Sarah Parcak wants to locate them. As a space archaeologist, she analyzes high-resolution imagery collected by satellites in order to identify subtle changes to the Earth’s surface that might signal man-made features hidden from view. A TED Senior Fellow and a National Geographic Explorer, Parcak wrote the textbook on satellite archaeology and founded the Laboratory for Global Observation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her goal: to make the world's invisible history visible once again.

In Egypt, Parcak's techniques have helped locate 17 potential pyramids, and more than 3,100 potential forgotten settlements. She's also made discoveries in the Viking world (as seen in the PBS Nova special, Vikings Unearthed) and across the Roman Empire (as shown in the BBC documentary, Rome’s Lost Empire). Her methods also offer a new way to understand how ancient sites are being affected by looting and urban development. By satellite-mapping Egypt and comparing sites over time, Parcak has noted a 1,000 percent increase in looting since 2009. It’s likely that millions of dollars worth of artifacts are stolen each year. Parcak hopes that, through her work, unknown sites can be protected to preserve our rich, vibrant history.

As the winner of the 2016 TED Prize, Parcak asked the world to help in this important work. By building a citizen science platform for archaeology, GlobalXplorer.org, Parcak invites anyone with an internet connection to help find the next potential looting pit or unknown tomb. GlobalXplorer launched on January 30, 2017, with volunteers working together to map Peru. Other countries will follow, as the platform democratizes discovery and makes satellite-mapping rapid and cost-effective. 

 

More profile about the speaker
Sarah Parcak | Speaker | TED.com
TED2012

Sarah Parcak: Archaeology from space

Filmed:
1,129,965 views

In this short talk, TED Fellow Sarah Parcak introduces the field of "space archaeology" -- using satellite images to search for clues to the lost sites of past civilizations.
- Satellite archaeologist + TED Prize winner
Like a modern-day Indiana Jones, Sarah Parcak uses satellite images to locate lost ancient sites. The winner of the 2016 TED Prize, her wish is to protect the world’s shared cultural heritage. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:16
When I was a child growing up in Maine,
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one of my favorite things to do
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was to look for sand dollars on the seashores of Maine,
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because my parents told me it would bring me luck.
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But you know, these shells, they're hard to find.
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They're covered in sand. They're difficult to see.
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However, overtime, I got used to looking for them.
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I started seeing shapes
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and patterns that helped me to collect them.
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This grew into a passion for finding things,
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a love for the past and archaeology.
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And eventually when I started studying Egyptology,
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I realized that seeing with my naked eyes alone wasn't enough.
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Because all of the sudden in Egypt
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my beach had grown from a tiny beach in Maine
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to one eight hundred miles long
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next to the Nile,
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and my sand dollars had grown
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to the size of cities.
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This is really what brought me to using satellite imagery.
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For trying to map the past, I knew that I had to see differently.
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So I want to show you an example of how we see differently
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using the infrared.
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This is a site located in the eastern Egyptian delta
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called Bendix.
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And the site visibly appears brown,
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but when we use the infrared
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and we process it, all of the sudden, using false color,
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the site appears as bright pink.
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What you are seeing
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are the actual chemical changes to the landscape
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caused by the building materials and activities
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of the ancient Egyptians.
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What I want to share with you today
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is how we've used satellite data
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to find an ancient Egyptian city,
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called Itjtawy,
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missing for thousands of years.
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Itjtawy was ancient Egypt's capital
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for over four hundred years,
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at a period of time called the Middle Kingdom
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about four thousand years ago.
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The site is located in the Faiyum of Egypt
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and site is really important because in the Middle Kingdom
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there was this great renaissance for ancient Egyptian art,
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architecture and religion.
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Egyptologists have always known the site of Itjtawy
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was located somewhere near the pyramids
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of the two kings who built it, indicated within the red circles here,
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but somewhere within this massive flood plane.
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This area is huge --
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it's four miles by three miles in size.
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The Nile used to flow right next to the city of Itjtawy,
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and as it shifted and changed and moved over time to the east,
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it covered over the city.
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So, how do you find a buried city
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in a vast landscape?
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Finding it randomly would be the equivalent
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of locating a needle in a haystack,
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blindfolded wearing baseball mitts.
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So what we did is we used NASA topography data
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to map out the landscape, very subtle changes.
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We started to be able to see where the Nile used to flow.
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But you can see in more detail -- and even more interesting --
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this very slight raised area
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seen within the circle up here, which we thought could possibly be
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the location of the city of Itjtawy.
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So we collaborated with the Egyptian scientists
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to do coring work, which you see here.
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When I say coring, it's like ice coring, but instead of
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layers of climate change you're looking for layers of human occupation.
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And five meters down,
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underneath a thick layer of mud,
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we found a dense layer of pottery.
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What this shows is that at this possible location
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of Itjtawy, five meters down,
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we have of layer of occupation for several hundred years
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dating to the Middle Kingdom, dating to the exact period of time
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we think Itjtawy is.
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We also found work stone --
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carnelian, quartz and agate that shows
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that there was a jewelers workshop here.
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These might not look like much,
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but when you think about the most common stones
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used in jewelry from the Middle Kingdom,
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these are the stones that were used.
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So, we have a dense layer of occupation
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dating to the Middle Kingdom at this site.
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We also have evidence of an elite jewelers workshop,
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showing that whatever was there was a very important city.
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No Itjtawy was here yet,
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but we're going to be returning to the site
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in the near future to map it out.
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And even more importantly,
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we have funding to train young Egyptians
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in the use of satellite technology
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so they can be the ones making great discoveries as well.
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So I wanted to end with my favorite quote
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from the Middle Kingdom --
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it was probably written at the city of Itjtawy four thousand years ago.
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"Sharing knowledge is the greatest of all callings.
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There's nothing like it in the land."
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So as it turns out, TED was not founded in 1984 AD.
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(Laughter)
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Making ideas actually started in 1984 BC
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at a not-lost-for-long city, found from above.
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It certainly puts finding seashells by the seashore in perspective.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Translated by Jenny Zurawell

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sarah Parcak - Satellite archaeologist + TED Prize winner
Like a modern-day Indiana Jones, Sarah Parcak uses satellite images to locate lost ancient sites. The winner of the 2016 TED Prize, her wish is to protect the world’s shared cultural heritage.

Why you should listen

There may be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of undiscovered ancient sites across the globe. Sarah Parcak wants to locate them. As a space archaeologist, she analyzes high-resolution imagery collected by satellites in order to identify subtle changes to the Earth’s surface that might signal man-made features hidden from view. A TED Senior Fellow and a National Geographic Explorer, Parcak wrote the textbook on satellite archaeology and founded the Laboratory for Global Observation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her goal: to make the world's invisible history visible once again.

In Egypt, Parcak's techniques have helped locate 17 potential pyramids, and more than 3,100 potential forgotten settlements. She's also made discoveries in the Viking world (as seen in the PBS Nova special, Vikings Unearthed) and across the Roman Empire (as shown in the BBC documentary, Rome’s Lost Empire). Her methods also offer a new way to understand how ancient sites are being affected by looting and urban development. By satellite-mapping Egypt and comparing sites over time, Parcak has noted a 1,000 percent increase in looting since 2009. It’s likely that millions of dollars worth of artifacts are stolen each year. Parcak hopes that, through her work, unknown sites can be protected to preserve our rich, vibrant history.

As the winner of the 2016 TED Prize, Parcak asked the world to help in this important work. By building a citizen science platform for archaeology, GlobalXplorer.org, Parcak invites anyone with an internet connection to help find the next potential looting pit or unknown tomb. GlobalXplorer launched on January 30, 2017, with volunteers working together to map Peru. Other countries will follow, as the platform democratizes discovery and makes satellite-mapping rapid and cost-effective. 

 

More profile about the speaker
Sarah Parcak | Speaker | TED.com