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" Once archaeologists have shown possible 'new' ancient features, they can import the data into their iPads and take it to the field to do survey or excavation work. Technology doesn't mean we aren't digging in the dirt anymore - it's just that we know better where to dig. "

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" 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. "

Sarah Parcak

Place

Need

Problems

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" The map we made of the 3,000-year-old city of Tanis requires no imagination. It has buildings, streets, admin complexes, houses - clear as day. "

" Indiana Jones is old school; we've moved on from Indy. Sorry, Harrison Ford. "

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

" 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. "

Sarah Parcak

Exploring

Person

" 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. "

" In archaeology, context is everything. Objects allow us to reconstruct the past. Taking artifacts from a temple or an ancient private house is like emptying out a time capsule. "

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

" 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. "

Sarah Parcak

Writing

You

" Archaeologists gave the military the idea to use aerial photographs for spying and field survey. We are fortunate that the spatial and spectral resolutions of the imagery available to us are so broadly useful for archaeology. "

Sarah Parcak

Military

Archaeology

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 only technology that can 'see' beneath the ground is radar imagery. But satellite imagery also allows scientists to map short- and long-term changes to the Earth's surface. Buried archaeological remains affect the overlying vegetation, soils and even water in different ways, depending on the landscapes you're examining. "

" I played varsity soccer at Yale and continued playing at Cambridge. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" What these satellites do is they record light radiation that's reflected off the surface of the Earth in different parts of the light spectrum. We use false color imaging to try to tease out these very subtle differences on the ground. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

Sarah Parcak

World

Egypt

" 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. "

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

" To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist. "