Archaeologist never stepped a foot in Saudi Arabia
Google Earth has allowed an Australian archaeologist from the comfort of his office in Perth, and who has never set a foot in Saudi Arabia to discover around 2,000 ancient east of Jeddah.
Professor David Kennedy from the University of Western Australia has identified 1,977 possible sites by looking at satellite images of a 1,240-square km area east of Jeddah, the Saudi-based daily Arab News reported on Saturday.
The findings which have been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science include 1,082 ancient stone tombs or "pendants," so called because they are shaped like tear drops.
The age of the Jeddah structures according to Dr. Kennedy is around 9,000 years, but without visiting the area, the exact age cannot be verified.
"Just from Google Earth it’s impossible to know whether we have found a Bedouin structure that was made 150 years ago or 10,000 years ago," Dr. Kennedy told the London-based New Scientist magazine.
Google opening Saudi
Saudi Arabia is "not the easiest country to break into," Kennedy said, but in the five years it has been available, Google Earth, has helped in opening up the Kingdom massively, he added.
"Initial investigations already suggest large parts of the country are immensely rich in archaeological remains and most of those identified are certainly pre-Islamic and probably several thousand years old," he wrote in his article in the JAS.
In a war-torn country like Afghanistan, Google has helped to discover the country’s archaeology.
In 2008, through satellite images, Australian archaeologists were able from the relative safety of Melbourne to identify 463 hitherto unknown sites in the Registan area between Helmand and Kandahar provinces.