5 ms·

I'd love to see more satellite-based underwater archaeology, seeing how far sea levels rise after the last glacial period. A lot of human history is probably ou

I'd love to see more satellite-based underwater archaeology, seeing how far sea levels rise after the last glacial period. A lot of human history is probably out on the continental shelves. See, for example, Doggerland beneath the English Channel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

paganel 3y ago
More aerial Lidar-based archeology would also be pretty cool. It seems that there was a strong momentum in that direction a few years ago but recently I’ve stopped hearing about it (or at least not that often compared to the recent past).
- akiselev 3y ago
  LIDAR has made a splash in archaeology last few years, especially in South America where the jungles cover up all the ruins. See [1][2][3] etc You haven't heard much about it because everyone is scrambling for funding to go excavate these ruins in person. [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/maya-lase... [2] https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/lidar-technology-confirms-the-existence-of-a-lost-city-in-the-brazilian-amazon https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/lidar-technology-confi... [3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/lidar-reveals-hundreds-of-long-lost-maya-and-olmec-ceremonial-centers/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/lidar-reveals-hundre...
paulusthe 3y ago
It's not probably out there, it's definitely out there. One of the absolute best places to be a hunter gatherer is in river deltas and low lying floodplains. If we could magically lower sea levels by 100m, we'd find evidence of humanity not only in doggerland but off the coast of Africa, China, Australia, and more. In fact some archaeologists are planning future underwater digs based on today's topographical hints of ancient riverbeds now underwater. There's a massive one off Bengal, another one near Ceylon, and a few more I can't remember right now.
- malux85 3y ago
  Could these places be a source for gold? Were these cultures advanced enough to be mining and smelting gold?
  - jewayne 3y ago
    So, your first thought when searching for artifacts from the ancient past is whether they can be melted down into commodities?
    - Teever 3y ago
      A more charitable interpretation of the comment that you replied to is that the artifacts may be located near ancient gold mines, and after we've retrieved the artifacts during excavation then we could potentially continue to mine the valuable resources in the same location.
      - mxkopy 3y ago
        I think GP might've been sarcastic, but even if not, there's no need to be charitable to such a caricaturistic intent to extract resources.
      - throwbadubadu 3y ago
        Erm, just no and that wasn't necessary, or GPT?
      - AlotOfReading 3y ago
        Any implication that archaeologists are remotely interested in gold or that there's monetary profit to be had from excavations is almost always destructive to the cause of heritage programs. I've done anti-looting programs in various places around the world as part of excavations. The belief that gold and other precious artifacts will be found is one of the most common causes/justifications for looting. Moreover, the belief that archaeologists are motivated or will in any way help to find precious metals is utterly corrosive to our ability to work with local authorities because it reduces trust and incentivises preemptive looting whenever we show up, among other things. Let me emphasize this: finding precious metals sucks. It means you have a lot more paperwork, it means you get a lot more looting, it means a lot of government interest, it means treasure hoard laws apply, future excavation decisions become far more political, etc. It's a massive pain in the butt all around.
dr_dshiv 3y ago
Do you think we will discover some frequency of light that will let us map the ocean floors as you imagine?
- netcraft 3y ago
  AFAIK there are no frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum we are not aware of, but our techniques and signal processing can potentially improve. There are also frequencies of waves other than light that we can use, such as sonar - but not from a satellite of course.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    > there are no frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum we are not aware of, How would we know if we aren’t aware of them though?
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      Well, where would these hypothetical frequencies exist in the spectrum?
- daveslash 3y ago
  It's not really about the frequency of light. We pretty much have "discovered" all frequencies -- it's the electromagnetic spectrum. We know all of the frequencies that exist. The trick is devising new methods with increasingly sensitive instrumentation. This article talks about how researchers looked at measurements taken from space to gauge where the sea level was a mere few-centimeters higher than the surrounding area! Incredible! In theory, I could have seen someone like Arthur C. Clarke proposing this half a century ago - but with the precision in instrumentation only becoming available today, the idea could have been proposed long before the technology existed. In the future, might we devise a method and accompanying instrumentation that will allow us to map the sea floor with just a regular flash light hung from a ship? Maybe (but probably not). Point being: It's the methodology + instrumentation, not the frequency of light itself.
z3c0 3y ago
Another example: the underwater structures off the coast of Cuba https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_underwater_formation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_underwater_formation
- adastra22 3y ago
  At 600+ meters of depth, those are almost certainly not of human origin. There are many examples of these sorts of phenomena, which derive their regular shapes from the way crystalline minerals fracture.
  - whydoyoucare 3y ago
    I am curious now - at what depths is it considered human origin? Is it because we know how much the sea level has risen in the last x years?
    - akiselev 3y ago
      During the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago the sea level was about 130 meters below today's [1] so agriculture would be found above that. About a hundred thousand years before that sea levels were close to modern levels and the current ice age [2] started almost half a million years after the first stone industry [3] got started, so sea levels would have been much higher (200-300 meters higher than today). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan
      - joshuahedlund 3y ago
        Is there any additional potential wiggle room for local uplift/erosion/etc over time, in some areas, or is that mostly a rounding error?
        3y ago

paganel 3y ago

More aerial Lidar-based archeology would also be pretty cool. It seems that there was a strong momentum in that direction a few years ago but recently I’ve stopped hearing about it (or at least not that often compared to the recent past).

akiselev 3y ago
LIDAR has made a splash in archaeology last few years, especially in South America where the jungles cover up all the ruins. See [1][2][3] etc You haven't heard much about it because everyone is scrambling for funding to go excavate these ruins in person. [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/maya-lase... [2] https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/lidar-technology-confirms-the-existence-of-a-lost-city-in-the-brazilian-amazon https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/lidar-technology-confi... [3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/lidar-reveals-hundreds-of-long-lost-maya-and-olmec-ceremonial-centers/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/lidar-reveals-hundre...

paulusthe 3y ago

It's not probably out there, it's definitely out there. One of the absolute best places to be a hunter gatherer is in river deltas and low lying floodplains. If we could magically lower sea levels by 100m, we'd find evidence of humanity not only in doggerland but off the coast of Africa, China, Australia, and more. In fact some archaeologists are planning future underwater digs based on today's topographical hints of ancient riverbeds now underwater. There's a massive one off Bengal, another one near Ceylon, and a few more I can't remember right now.

malux85 3y ago
Could these places be a source for gold? Were these cultures advanced enough to be mining and smelting gold?
- jewayne 3y ago
  So, your first thought when searching for artifacts from the ancient past is whether they can be melted down into commodities?
  - Teever 3y ago
    A more charitable interpretation of the comment that you replied to is that the artifacts may be located near ancient gold mines, and after we've retrieved the artifacts during excavation then we could potentially continue to mine the valuable resources in the same location.
    - mxkopy 3y ago
      I think GP might've been sarcastic, but even if not, there's no need to be charitable to such a caricaturistic intent to extract resources.
    - throwbadubadu 3y ago
      Erm, just no and that wasn't necessary, or GPT?
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      Any implication that archaeologists are remotely interested in gold or that there's monetary profit to be had from excavations is almost always destructive to the cause of heritage programs. I've done anti-looting programs in various places around the world as part of excavations. The belief that gold and other precious artifacts will be found is one of the most common causes/justifications for looting. Moreover, the belief that archaeologists are motivated or will in any way help to find precious metals is utterly corrosive to our ability to work with local authorities because it reduces trust and incentivises preemptive looting whenever we show up, among other things. Let me emphasize this: finding precious metals sucks. It means you have a lot more paperwork, it means you get a lot more looting, it means a lot of government interest, it means treasure hoard laws apply, future excavation decisions become far more political, etc. It's a massive pain in the butt all around.

dr_dshiv 3y ago

Do you think we will discover some frequency of light that will let us map the ocean floors as you imagine?

netcraft 3y ago
AFAIK there are no frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum we are not aware of, but our techniques and signal processing can potentially improve. There are also frequencies of waves other than light that we can use, such as sonar - but not from a satellite of course.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  > there are no frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum we are not aware of, How would we know if we aren’t aware of them though?
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    Well, where would these hypothetical frequencies exist in the spectrum?
daveslash 3y ago
It's not really about the frequency of light. We pretty much have "discovered" all frequencies -- it's the electromagnetic spectrum. We know all of the frequencies that exist. The trick is devising new methods with increasingly sensitive instrumentation. This article talks about how researchers looked at measurements taken from space to gauge where the sea level was a mere few-centimeters higher than the surrounding area! Incredible! In theory, I could have seen someone like Arthur C. Clarke proposing this half a century ago - but with the precision in instrumentation only becoming available today, the idea could have been proposed long before the technology existed. In the future, might we devise a method and accompanying instrumentation that will allow us to map the sea floor with just a regular flash light hung from a ship? Maybe (but probably not). Point being: It's the methodology + instrumentation, not the frequency of light itself.

z3c0 3y ago

Another example: the underwater structures off the coast of Cuba https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_underwater_formation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_underwater_formation

adastra22 3y ago
At 600+ meters of depth, those are almost certainly not of human origin. There are many examples of these sorts of phenomena, which derive their regular shapes from the way crystalline minerals fracture.
- whydoyoucare 3y ago
  I am curious now - at what depths is it considered human origin? Is it because we know how much the sea level has risen in the last x years?
  - akiselev 3y ago
    During the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago the sea level was about 130 meters below today's [1] so agriculture would be found above that. About a hundred thousand years before that sea levels were close to modern levels and the current ice age [2] started almost half a million years after the first stone industry [3] got started, so sea levels would have been much higher (200-300 meters higher than today). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan
    - joshuahedlund 3y ago
      Is there any additional potential wiggle room for local uplift/erosion/etc over time, in some areas, or is that mostly a rounding error?
      - 3y ago