Bangalore: Satellite photos of Talakad, an ancient city located on the banks of the Cauvery, near Mysore, have found several man-made canals which, archaeologists say, lend weight to the famous curse that brought this temple destination down.
According to legend, Talakad was swept away by sand dunes after it was cursed by Alamelamma -- wife of Tirumala II, the defeated king of Srirangapatnam --who killed herself after Mysore king Raja Wodeyar took over in 1610.
Before dying she said Talakad would become sand, Malangi (a nearby village) a whirlpool and the Mysore Rajas will fail to beget heirs, a curse which is still said to be acting on the royal family.
The research, which was conducted by the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in collaboration with the state archaeology department, Karnataka, found a well-developed canal system extending a few kilometres from Talakad to Cauvery. "We analysed the site through geospatial maps recorded by a satellite using infrared and radar technology," said MB Rajani, the project head. "A GPS survey was done on the site for more accuracy. By analysing data and comparing it with historical evidence, we were able to arrive at the findings."
The findings support the 400-year-old curse theory, but experts are unsure how such a well-designed and fertile city, which had an elaborate water supply system, could fall victim to sand dunes. Archaeologists believe the canals are only the tip of the iceberg. Supporting the NIAS finding is an inscription found at Malingi. "The inscription says land near the temples of Talakad was marshland.
There was no water source in Talakad. The water could have been brought into the city through the canals," an archaeological department official said. Past excavations, he said, have revealed water reservoirs in the temple city.
An incredible series of ancient lines, circles and shapes has been documented similar to the famous landscape lines in Nazca, Peru except these lines exist on the American landscape. The circular features, and various linear shapes are connected by lines and they appear to be ancient in origin found in very remote locations in Utah by Ed Payne of Lindon, Utah. Many of the geoglyphs have been partially hidden by nature and some of the lines have been turned into modern roads. Some long lines continue up to the edges of tall cliffs where they are abruptly cut off by a vertical drop.
Found via Google Earth at the following coordinates: 52.108914°, -4.707867°
"A HUGE ancient fish trap more than 250 metres long and probably at least 1,000 years old has just been discovered in the Teifi estuary.
The underwater structure was first identified on aerial photographs and a recent exploratory dive at the site near Poppit has revealed the structure is protruding about 30 cm above the sand, allowing for a fuller investigation by divers.
A collaborative project is currently underway between Pembrokeshire College and the Dyfed Archaeological Trust, and members of the public are being asked to help with information for research into the conundrum of the ‘Poppit fish-trap’.
Dr Ziggy Otto, lecturer in the coastal zone and marine environment research unit at Pembrokeshire College, explained: "A large, underwater structure has been identified on aerial photographs and there can be little doubt that this rather impressive – and quite apparently man-made -structure is an ancient fish-trap.
"The structure is entirely underwater (at all stages of the tide); it has never been surveyed, but is approximately 260 metres long, and is possibly made of locally quarried rock, although use of boulders carried in during the last glaciation cannot be ruled out either.
"Its age is unknown, but because of its now entirely subtidal position, this fish-trap is very old, possibly dating back more than 1,000 years, when the sea level was lower and the entrance to the Teifi Estuary further towards the Poppit side."
He adds that the structure’s orientation precludes the possibility that it was designed to catch migratory fish, such as salmon and sea trout, going up the Teifi.
"The structure is a true conundrum, and certainly worthwhile investigating further, because it forms part of the historic and cultural seascape of the area."
The fish-trap can be viewed on Google Earth, north-west of the RNLI station at Poppit in front of the cliffs. If members of the public have any information, however anecdotal or minor, the investigators would like to hear from them. "
Addition of a series of linear, road features along the coast line of Belize on the Yucatan peninsula has been added to the Ultimate Google Earth Anomaly Collection. The linear features are approximately 6 feet wide and existed before the area was below sea level. Many of the lines are broken but continue on into the shallow water area and were obviously destroyed by the rising water in many places. The precision of the roads is very accurate as the lines almost seem like modern, surveyed roads and they also continue to the North to become one with modern day roads. What is a bit perplexing is the close proximity of the lines to each other which makes you wonder why parallel roads running side by side are needed unless they were used for a purpose other than as a means of transportation.
Thanks for everyone who sent me e-mails about this anomaly. I had seen it awhile back and added it to the list of sites to include but I had put it on the back burner.
If anyone has any ideas as to what these features could be, please post a comment.
A wonderful list of satellite and aerial software links is available now for download at the following links. Leave a comment if you use the software and let us know which software you prefer. This is a great resource for all interested in anaylzing satellite and aerial imagery for research purposes.
Anthropologists, with the assistance of satellite imagery, have discovered the remains of a series of ancient canals, located just south of the Salt River, near the very heart of downtown Mesa, Arizona.
The existence of the canal system, built in the Salt River valley centuries ago by the Hohokam, has long been known, but the extent of this most recent discovery has caught some experts by surprise.
Jerry B. Howard, curator of anthropology at the Arizona Museum of Natural History is one of the experts involved in archaeological studies of the region being conducted before the city of Mesa can permit the area to be redeveloped. Planners had intended to build a massive water park on the property, but all bets are off as to whether that plan can still move forward.
"Through satellite imagery, sometimes we can actually see the canals, kind of a signature of them," states Howard. "The soil in them is different than the other soil around them, more porous and moist.”
The area, larger in scope than previously anticipated, is currently home to a golf course and a hospital, the two of which are separated by not surprisingly, the Mesa Grande Pueblo ruins.
These ruins, located near the heart downtown Mesa, were once occupied by the Hohokam Indians, responsible for constructing massive canal systems, still providing water to the Valley of the Sun, hundreds of years after the Hohokam mysteriously vanished.
The Hohokam inhabited the northern Sonora desert region known as the ‘Phoenix Basin’ for centuries before the arrival of the European explorers. They constructed extensive canals and irrigation networks, rivaling those of Ancient Egypt and China. These industrious peoples cultivated a variety of crops, including tobacco, cotton, beans, squash, maize and agave.
The latest phase of an English Heritage backed project to create a digital map of England by collating archaeological information from aerial archive photographs has resulted in nearly 4,000 archaeological discoveries in Norfolk.
The major project, called the National Mapping Programme (NMP), uses modern and historic aerial photographs - many of them contained in the National Monuments Record - to identify and analyse archaeological sites that have lain hidden for many years.
Among the 4,000 forgotten sites rediscovered in Norfolk are Bronze Age burial mounds, Iron Age settlements, Roman camps, medieval villages and World War II defences. The project has also created an accurate record of around 2,000 previously known sites.
“The National Mapping Programme is transforming our knowledge of landscape archaeology across England and the team are producing some fantastic results in Norfolk,” reported Helen Winton, Senior Investigator and NMP team leader for English Heritage.
"INDIANA JONES, it is fair to say, would not approve. A small band of archaeologists are using Google Earth to make discoveries without getting their hands dirty. Although archaeologists have used satellite imagery for decades, the technique remained out of reach of most researchers because of the prohibitive costs and specialist skills needed to rectify distortions in raw satellite images caused by the angle of capture. But Google Earth, a free program that can be downloaded from the internet giant’s website, makes high-quality satellite images of much of the world’s surface available to anyone with a broadband connection. Archaeologists are now embracing the technology.
David Thomas, a graduate student at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, belongs to a team that launched a project called Archaeological Sites of Afghanistan in Google Earth (ASAGE) last year after plans for a survey near the Minaret of Jam had to be abandoned because of the continuing conflict in the region. He and his colleagues decided that making discoveries using computer mice, rather than shovels and trowels, would have to do instead.
“Realistically it is not possible for a Western field archaeologist to work in that area, and I can’t imagine it will be for the next 20 years,” says Mr Thomas. But, he says, studying images from Google Earth (pictured) “has the potential to enrich significantly our knowledge of Afghanistan’s archaeological remains, particularly in areas that are too large, dangerous or remote to survey from the ground.”
One aspect of the ASAGE project involved the use of high-resolution satellite images to catalogue the details of 463 previously unknown sites in the Registan desert, including mounds known as tepes (the remains of ancient settlements), hand-dug water channels and abandoned dams and reservoirs.
Little is known about the ancient history of the region, but nearby river valleys have been occupied for centuries, if not millennia. The Ghaznavids, who ruled over a large central Asian empire between the late 10th and 12th centuries, built intricate irrigation systems and established palaces, mosques and walled gardens at their winter capital of Bust and the surrounding settlements of Lashkari Bazar, on the east bank of the Helmand river."
British archaeologists used thousands of aerial photos to reveal more than 2,700 unrecorded historic features of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England.
Among the new features identified by experts from the English Heritage were medieval sheep farms, ancient burial mounds and 19th Century lead mines.
The scientists used more than 30,500 pictures taken during the past 60 years as part of an English Heritage initiative to map and interpret England’s archaeological sites.
The project began in 2002, and includes a wide area on either side of the 73 mile length of the wall from the Solway Plain in Cumbria to Newcastle in the east.
Recorded features of Hadrian’s Wall, a World Heritage Site, include a World War II anti-aircraft gun battery near Cleadon, Tyneside, an Iron Age hillfort near Fourstones, Northumberland, and the abandoned medieval village of East Matfen.
"We need to remember that Hadrian's Wall is not an isolated monument set within a landscape devoid of any other history,” said David MacLeod of English Heritage's Aerial Survey and Investigation team.
"This region saw a tremendous amount of activity before the Romans arrived and after they left, traces and memories of which remain today,” he told BBC News.
"It will help us to understand and manage the rich heritage of human activity that has shaped this landscape, whether it is the remains of a Bronze Age farm or a 20th Century gun battery."
Scientists are using advanced visualization technologies to find the hidden tomb of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol empire.
According to legend, Genghis Khan lies buried somewhere beneath the dusty steppe of Northeastern Mongolia, entombed in a very secretive spot.
Once he was below ground, his men brought in horses to trample evidence of his grave, and just to be absolutely sure he would never be found, they diverted a river to flow over their leaders final resting place.
What Khan and his followers couldnt have envisioned was that nearly 800 years after his death, scientists at UC (University of California) San Diegos Center for Interdisciplinary Science in Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) would try to locate his tomb using advanced visualization technologies, whose origins can be traced back to the time of the Mongolian emperor himself.
As outrageous as it might sound, were looking for the tomb of Genghis Khan, Dr. Albert Yu-Min Lin, an affiliated researcher for CISA3, told Science News.
There are few clues and no factual evidence about Genghis Khans burial, which is why we need to start using technology to solve this mystery, he added.
Lin and several colleagues are hoping to use advanced visualization and analytical technologies available at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) to pinpoint Khans tomb and conduct a non-invasive archaeological analysis of the area where he is believed to be buried.
Lins hope for success is based on his access to unparalleled technology at Calit2 and CISA3 to pinpoint the area where Khan might have been laid to rest, find the tomb itself and then develop a virtual recreation of it using various methods of spectral and digital imaging.
According to Lin, If you have a large burial, thats going to have an impact on the landscape. To find Khans tomb, well be using remote sensing techniques and satellite imagery to take digital pictures of the ground in the surrounding region, which well be able to display on Calit2s 287-million pixel HIPerSpace display wall.
Once weve narrowed down this region in Mongolia to a certain area, well use techniques such as ground penetrating radar, electromagnetic induction and magnetometry to produce non-destructive, non-invasive surveys, said Lin.
Well then work with people in UCSDs electrical engineering department to develop visual algorithms that will allow us to create a high-resolution, 3-D representation of the site, he added.
Lin said that hes hoping to collaborate with the Mongolian government and national universities for the project. (ANI)
A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome.
Nicola Masini and Rosa Lasaponara of Italy's National Research Council (CNR) discovered the pyramid by analyzing images from the satellite Quickbird, which they used to penetrate the Peruvian soil.
The researchers investigated a test area along the river Nazca. Covered by plants and grass, it was about a mile away from Cahuachi's archaeological site, which contains the remains of what is believed to be the world's biggest mud city.
Via Quickbird, Masini and colleagues collected hi-resolution infrared and multispectral images. After the researchers optimized the images with special algorithms, the result was a detailed visualization of a pyramid extending over a 9,000-square-meter area.
The discovery doesn't come as a surprise to archaeologists, since some 40 mounds at Cahuachi are believed to contain the remains of important structures.
"We know that many buildings are still buried under Cahuachi's sands, but until now, it was almost impossible to exactly locate them and detect their shape from an aerial view," Masini told Discovery News. "The biggest problem was the very low contrast between adobe, which is sun-dried earth, and the background subsoil."
Cahuachi is the best-known site of the Nazca civilization, which flourished in Peru between the first century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. and slid into oblivion by the time the Inca Empire rose to dominate the Andes.
Famous for carving in the Peruvian desert hundreds of geometric lines and images of animals and birds that are best viewed from the air, the Nazca people built Cahuachi as a ceremonial center, molding pyramids, temples and plazas from the desert itself.
There, priests led ceremonies including human sacrifices, drawing people from across the region.
Between 300 and 350 A.D., two natural disasters -- a powerful flood and a devastating earthquake -- hit Cahuachi. The site lost its sacred power to the Nazca, who then abandoned the area.
But before leaving, they sealed all monuments and buried them under the desert sand.
"Up to now, we have completely unearthed and restored a huge asymmetrical pyramid, known as the Grand Pyramid. A terraced temple and a smaller pyramid are in an advanced state of excavation," Giuseppe Orefici, an archaeologist who has spent decades excavating Cahuachi and has also worked with the CNR researchers, wrote in the conference paper.
Featuring a 300-by-328-foot base, the newly discovered pyramid consists of at least "four degrading terraces which suggest a truncated pyramid similar to the Grand Pyramid." With seven levels, this imposing monument was sculpted from the landscape and enhanced by large adobe walls.
"This is an interesting finding. As with the Grand Pyramid, it is likely that also this pyramid contains the remains of human sacrifices," Andrea Drusini, an anthropologist at Padova University, told Discovery News.
In previous excavations at Cahuachi, Drusini found some 20 severed "offering heads" at various locations inside the Grand Pyramid.
"They have circular holes cut into the forehead and were perfectly prepared from an anatomical point of view," Drusini said.
The researchers are now investigating other buried structures next to the newly discovered pyramid.
"This innovative technology opens up new perspectives for the detection of buried adobe monuments in Cahuachi and elsewhere," said Masini. "Once we have more information about the size and shape of the structures, we might turn to virtual archaeology to bring the pyramid and its nearby structures back to life."
"Ohio State University (OSU) researchers monitoring daily satellite images of Greenland’s glaciers have discovered break-ups at the Petermann and Jakobshavn glaciers’s—two of the country’s largest—in the last month. They expect that part of what is the Northern hemisphere’s longest floating glacier will continue to disintegrate within the next year.
Petermann has a floating section of ice 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide and 50 miles (80.4 kilometers) long which covers 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers). An 11 mi2 (29 km2) piece of the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland broke away between 10 to 24 July. The loss to that glacier is equal to half the size of Manhattan Island. The last major ice loss to Petermann occurred when the glacier lost 33 square miles (86 square kilometers) of floating ice between 2000 and 2001.
Jason Box, an associate professor of geography at Ohio State, and his colleagues, graduate students Russell Benson and David Decker, all with the Byrd Polar Research Center, also identified what appears to be a massive crack further back from the margin of the Petermann Glacier. That crack may signal an imminent and much larger breakup.
“If the Petermann glacier breaks up back to the upstream rift, the loss would be as much as 60 square miles (160 square kilometers),” Box said, representing a loss of one-third of the Petermann tongue."
According to news from the European Space Agency, the Wilkins Ice Shelf
is “hanging by its last thread” to the Antarctic Peninsula The
researchers are studying satellite images that show continuing
disintegration of the shelf and a fracture in the ice bridge connecting
the shelf to land. The bridge helps stabilize the ice shelf, and its
collapse could hasten the break-up of the shelf.
Surprising to scientists at the European agency and other research
centers is the fact that the break-up is occurring in the Antarctic
winter. One news headline read: “Even the Antarctic Winter Cannot
Protect Wilkins Ice.” In addition, these first-ever recorded winter
break-ups are different from earlier events this year. Ted Scambos of
the National Snow and Ice Data Center noted that the pieces are moving
out as large bergs and not as a divided mixture of ice.
::: Scientists Surprised by Midwinter Collapse of Massive Ice Shelf
From July 12, 2008:
Even the depths of winter are proving unable to halt the climate change-induced collapse of an Antarctic ice shelf.
When the Wilkins shelf began a runaway disintegration at the end of last summer, scientists thought it unlikely the collapse would continue through the pole's coldest months.
But satellite images show losses growing in recent days, so that at last sight, only a thin and fractured ice bridge held the bulk of the giant shelf in place. Its loss would put the rest of the 14,500- square-kilometre ice shelf at risk, the European Space Agency said.
"BELTSVILLE, Md. — NASA plans to launch a new satellite next year
that will help scientists fill in a gap in their understanding of
global warming: the role of clouds and airborne particles.
The satellite Glory, targeted for launch next June, will give
scientists a much better tool to measure particles than any satellite
so far. The particles, known as aerosols, are bits of things such as
dust and smog.
"Undoubtedly,
greenhouse gases cause the biggest climatic effect. But the uncertainty
in the aerosol effect is the biggest uncertainty in climate at the
present," said Michael Mishchenko, the Glory project scientist at the
Goddard Institute for Space Studies."
See the new Google Earth Anomalies video tour that contains 28 placemarks of Mima Mound sites in Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, Africa, and Florida; circular features in the Bahamas, Geoglyphs in Oregon, a Mound site in Egypt (perhaps a pyramid/mastaba?), circular features in Peru at a site that also contains odd linear features connecting the circular features, and a site over 280 miles from Nazca that contains linear features. I suggest you watch the video in high quality, maximized to full screen.
I have created a new site to document all the Google Earth Anomalies I've found over the years. The Google Earth place marks number over 5,000 and the purpose of the site is to compile all the place marks into a website for presentation to aid in arriving at conclusions based on the view from above.
One of the main goals of the site will be to document all the Mysterious, Mima Mound sites that are known to science and a few that are most likely unknown to the academic community. After viewing many Mima Mound sites all over the world and documenting them with Google Earth, I've come to the conclusion that the majority of these sites were some type of agricultural attempt by ancient man. However, the Mima Mounds are most likely polygenetic in origin, meaning they have more than one explanation for their formation.
The Mima Mounds are found all over the world, Peru, Australia, the US South West and many more places of interest that will be documented at the website. They literally can be found by the millions. One of the most interesting sites can be found in Africa in the Western Sahara Desert. This particular site stretches for miles and miles along the African coast with the mounds being aligned in a grid like fashion moreso than any documented site I have visited.
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