Sarah Parcak Quotes

When you think about archaeology, archaeology is the only field that allows us to tell the story of 99 percent of our history prior to 3,000 B.C. and writing.

What satellites help to show us is we’ve actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient settlements and sites all over the world… It’s the most exciting time in history to be an archaeologist.

I try to tell a lot of stories to make my students aware that the world is a very cool place with many problems that need solving, and that they all can help solve them.

I am honored to receive the TED Prize, but it’s not about me; it’s about our field – and the thousands of men and women around the world, particularly in the Middle East, who are defending and protecting sites.

What we did is we used NASA topography data to map out the landscape, very subtle changes. We started to be able to see where the Nile used to flow.

Scorpions like holes. We had to put our arms in the holes to dig out the smelting residues. We always performed critter checks before an excavation, but one morning, I put an arm in and felt a sharp pierce. When I brought my hand out, it was red and already swelling.

If you really want to be a good archaeologist, you have to understand ancient DNA; you have to understand chemical analysis to figure out the composition of ancient pots. You have to be able to study human remains. You need to be able to do computer processing and, in some cases, computer programming.

Discoveries aren’t made by one person exploring by themselves. And discoveries aren’t made overnight. People don’t see the thousands of hours that go into it.

Choosing an unconventional career path – I am not a traditional Egyptologist by any means. I found what I love, and I have stuck with it.

I give my grandfather, Dr Harold Young, a forestry Professor at the University of Maine, full credit for my career path. He pioneered the use of aerial photography in forestry in the 1950s, and we think he worked as a spy for the CIA during the Cold War, mapping Russian installations.

I’ve always loved teaching and reading and talking to people, and my grandfather was a professor.

I hope my work contributes to understanding long-term patterns of human behavior and how we survive, thrive, or fail during times of environmental, social, and economic crisis.

We have so many issues with overpopulation and urbanization and site looting. And this isn’t just Egypt. This is everywhere in the world, even in America. So we only have a limited amount of time left before many archaeological sites all over the world are destroyed.

When I was a child growing up in Maine, one of my favorite things to do was to look for sand dollars on the seashores of Maine, because my parents told me it would bring me luck. But you know, these shells, they’re hard to find. They’re covered in sand. They’re difficult to see.

If you look at the Nile on a map of Egypt, you don’t think it has moved very much, but the river is very violent and has moved over time.

My dream is to map every archaeological site in the world because, if we can do that, then we have this massive global data base that all sorts of global heritage organizations and heritage organizations within countries can use, and they can use that information to protect what’s there.

We want to excite the world about what’s out there. But we don’t want them to say, ‘Oh, there are lots of sites in Egypt – let’s loot.’

If you find a series of linear shapes in the same alignment as known archaeological features, and they match excavated examples, you still need to excavate to confirm, but you can be fairly sure that the imagery is accurate.

I’m looking at looting photos from space, and there are people putting their lives on the line every day protecting their heritage. I call these people the real culture heroes.

We have so many thousands of sites to find across the globe and new techniques to test. The field keeps evolving with the technology, which makes things exciting.

To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist.

Google Earth is an incredible resource because from hundreds of miles in space, we can zoom in, and we can find things. Everyone always looks for their house first. That is the tip of the iceberg with remote sensing.

What if Hiram Bingham had the technology to find hundreds of other archaeological sites at the same time and create entire 3-D maps of the ancient landscape accurate to within a few inches?

All over the world, we’re finding out that, you know, whether it’s Egypt or Syria or Central America, what satellites are showing is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of previously unknown settlements all over the world, and what archaeology does, it helps us to understand this common humanity that we have.

Looting has an immense impact on our ability to understand our global cultural heritage; once these objects are gone, so too is our chance of piecing together humanity’s shared story.

You think looting is bad in Egypt, look at Peru, India, China. I’ve been told in China there are over a quarter-million archaeological sites, and most have been looted. This is a global problem of massive proportions, and we don’t know the scale.

Think about what would happen if Indiana Jones and Google Earth had a love child. I use high-resolution and NASA satellites and look for subtle differences on the surface of the earth that locate buried ancient pyramids and towns and ancient tombs, which we then go and excavate.

Archaeologists use datasets from NASA and commercial satellites, processing the information using various off-the-shelf computer programs. These datasets allow us to see beyond the visible part of the light spectrum into the near, middle, and far infrared.

We only have a limited amount of time left before many archaeological sites all over the world are destroyed. So we have to be really selective about where we dig.

It’s both Indiana Jones and ‘National Geographic‘ that inspired me to be an Egyptologist.

I am one of many people documenting damage and looting at ancient sites from space – it is such a crucial tool.

A lot of people are surprised when I talk so much about the present, but politics is just a crucial part of archaeology.

Scientists use satellites to track weather, map ice sheet melting, detect diseases, show ecosystem change… the list goes on and on. I think nearly every scientific field benefits or could benefit from satellite imagery analysis.

Archaeology holds all the keys to understanding who we are and where we come from.

We emphasise the features on satellite maps by adding colours to farmland, urban structures, archaeological sites, vegetation and water.

A picture is worth a thousand words. A satellite image is worth a million dollars.

When you think about the scale of human populations all over the world and the fact that there’s so much here, really, the only way to be able to visualize that is to pull back in space… It allows us to see hidden temples and tombs and pyramids and even entire settlements.

Satellite imagery is the only way we can map the looting patterns effectively.

Less than 1 percent of ancient Egypt has been discovered and excavated. With population pressures, urbanization, and modernization encroaching, we’re in a race against time. Why not use the most advanced tools we have to map, quantify, and protect our past?

I already find pyramids from space. Is there anything cooler than that?

Seeing sites and features in places where we never looked or never thought things might exist is causing archaeologists across the world to think deeper about their sites or entire cultures.

With population pressures, urbanization, and modernization encroaching, we’re in a race against time. Why not use the most advanced tools we have to map, quantify, and protect our past?

What is amazing to me as an archaeologist is that the more and more I study, I realize we are resilient, we are creative, we are brilliant, and this is what makes us human, and that hasn’t changed since we’ve been human.

You just pull back for hundreds of miles using the satellite imagery, and all of a sudden this invisible world become visible. You’re actually able to see settlements and tombs – and even things like buried pyramids – that you might not otherwise be able to see.

The majority of the research I do is archaeological research, but to me, as a professor, the most important thing is to encourage and mentor students.

I’m an Egyptologist. I’m a remote sensing specialist, and I’m a space archaeologist.

Getting permission to use a drone in Egypt was problematical.

The looters are using Google Earth, too. They’re coming in with metal detectors and geophysical equipment. Some ask me to confirm sites.

We can tell from the imagery a tomb was looted from a particular period of time, and we can alert INTERPOL to watch out for antiquities from that time that may be offered for sale.

There are so many previously unknown sites and structures all over the world. And I think most importantly what satellites help to show us is we’ve actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient settlements and sites all over the world.

We’re literally just beginning to learn how to use satellites to find sites. More and more people are realizing there’s this incredible tool.

When a wall is slowly covered over by earth, the materials it’s made from decay and become part of the soils around and above it, sometimes causing vegetation above and next to the wall to grow faster or slower. Satellite imagery helps archaeologists to pick up these subtle changes.

You can theorize as much as you want about what you think you’re seeing, but until you get out there and dig, you can’t tell exactly what it is.

We’re using satellites to help map and model cultural features that could never be seen on the ground because they’re obscured by modernization, forests, or soil.

I dig in the sand, and I play with pretty pictures, so I never really left kindergarten.

Archaeologists have used aerial photographs to map archaeological sites since the 1920s, while the use of infrared photography started in the 1960s, and satellite imagery was first used in the 1970s.

There’s even an aircraft sensor system that sends down hundreds of thousands of pulses of light measured at different return rates. It allows you to literally strip away vegetation and see entire cities beneath the rain forest canopy. This is the unbelievable future of archaeology.

The most exciting part of what I do is understanding the scale of what we don’t know. There are just countless archaeological sites all over the world, and one of the most important and best ways of finding them is using digital technology.

WorldView-3 goes into the mid-infrared wavelength, allowing you to see very subtle geological differences on the sites at a 0.4-metre resolution.

I am part of a network of people monitoring what’s happening at ancient sites in Iraq and Syria – from space. We can see clearly the destruction.

Looting and site destruction are global problems. We have a tough road ahead, and one key will be developing more collaborations and using new technologies like satellite imagery.

It’s an important tool to focus where we’re excavating. It gives us a much bigger perspective on archaeological sites. We have to think bigger, and that’s what the satellites allow us to do.

We’ve got to map all of our ancient history before it’s gone because, let’s face it, if we don’t have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for?

I think archaeologists are stuck, and we are losing our past at a very rapid rate. Tens of thousands of sites will be lost, and we’ve only unveiled a tiny percent of the past.

Looting speaks to a lack of economic opportunities – frankly, we all would loot, too, if our families‘ continued survival depended on it.

Eventually, when I started studying Egyptology, I realized that seeing with my naked eyes alone wasn’t enough. Because all of the sudden, in Egypt, my beach had grown from a tiny beach in Maine to one eight hundred miles long, next to the Nile.