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Spy photos help locate ancient Syrian ruins
Australian archaeologists have uncovered the remains of ancient human settlements in Syria.A team of researchers from the Australian National University have used declassified US spy satellite images from the 1960s to help them find the location of the ruins. Archaeologist Mandy Mottram says the remains of pottery factories, tombs and even an ancient basilica were found. "You can pinpoint the sites using the satellite images quite simply because you see anomalies in the landscape," she said. "You can't go, 'Oh yes looking at the photograph, I know what this is going to be', you don't know that until you go there, but you can get a pretty fair idea that there's a site of some kind there." Ms Mottram says the remains of an ancient basilica were among the finds. "It quite possibly tumbled at some stage during an earthquake because there were a couple of large earthquakes that hit that region back in medieval times, but it's still got walls preserved and it quite possibly was part of a monastic community which existed on the top of this mountain," she said. Posted by: Oztralian 2006-08-03 |
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