If you find the artifact-hunting adventures of Indiana Jones thrilling but a little too gritty, a
new online tool will allow you to remotely analyze images of ancient sites taken from space. You can discover their hidden secrets and even protect them from looting and damage.
Welcome to the 21st-century world of space archaeology, in which culturally important ruins can be spotted and decoded via high-resolution images captured by Earth-orbiting satellites. And a platform called GlobalXplorer puts this experience at any user's fingertips, inviting all who have internet connections to assist archaeologists in finding and protecting sites around the world, some of which are yet to be brought to light.
GlobalXplorer, which launched today (Jan. 30), is stocked with imagery captured by satellite provider DigitalGlobe, representing 77,220 square miles (200,000 square kilometers) of sites located in Peru. By scanning "tiles" of the ground, users can identify and flag telltale signs of looting activity or unusual features that could represent an undiscovered structure, platform creator and space archaeologist Sarah Parcak announced at a press conference. Archaeologists and government agencies can then use this data to preserve sites that are in peril and to launch new excavations in unexplored areas, Parcak told reporters. [Image Gallery: How Technology Reveals Hidden Art Treasures https://www.livescience.com/57684-global-xplorer-crowdsourced-archaeology.html
