What’s All the Fuss About? Globalxplorer
Use the web to stop historical sites being plundered
What is it?
A new website (www.globalxplorer.org) that turns you into an armchair Indiana Jones, helping to protect archaeological sites from looting. By studying satellite images of Earth, you can spot signs that heritage sites have been ransacked.
What do I look out for?
Groups of black pits that looters have dug. These pockmarked areas look very different to genuine archaeological digs, but they’re not easy to spot, so Globalxplorer plays you a video tutorial when you sign up. Most pits are circular – although some appear rectangular with rounded corners – and they typically look very different to their surroundings. They are generally 2-5 metres in diameter, which you can judge using the site’s scale bar. You can also compare them to other objects, such as cars, to estimate size. But make sure you don’t get them mixed up with vegetation.
How will I know the difference?
Bushes and trees tend to look fuzzier than pits, and have a different colour. You also need to look for evidence of bulldozers. Looters use them to pretend they are clearing land to set up a farm.
Where am I looking?
Only in Peru at the moment, but with 200,000 square kilometres of imagery to examine you’ll be kept busy (Britain has 243,000 square kilometres by comparison).
Great. So how do I start?
Sign up at the website, then click the link in the confirmation email that arrives. Watch the tutorial video, then click Explore Now. Scrutinise each image then, on the left, click Looting or No Looting (see screenshot above).
What if I can’t find any looting?
That’s OK – negative findings are still valuable because they help archaeologists narrow their search. It’s unlikely you’ll find a lost ark or a temple of doom, but you may stop looters from doing so.
Who’s behind the website?
Self-styled ‘space archaeologist’ Sarah Parcak, a professor at the University of Alabama. She has previously used satellite imagery to find buried pyramids in Egypt and a Viking village in Newfoundland, Canada. She set up Globalxplorer, backed by the National Geographic Society, after winning the $1m TED Prize in 2015, which recognises inspirational ideas to help solve “some of the world’s most pressing problems” (Jamie Oliver won it in 2010 for his ‘Food Revolution’).
Why is the project important?
Because, as Parcak says, the past five years have been “horrific” for archaeology, with hundreds of sites being destroyed and artefacts stolen. Isis were responsible for one of the worst acts when in 2015 it reduced the ancient city of Palmyra to rubble. Parcak’s aim is to use crowdsourcing to empower “a 21st-century army of global explorers”.
Wait - what’s crowdsourcing?
It’s when the public analyse large sets of data in order to speed up research being carried out by institutions, an exercise sometimes called ‘citizen science’. Like Globalxplorer, many involve examining photos. In Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org), for example, you have to classify types of galaxy, while Moon Zoo (www.moonzoo.org), which ended in 2016, asked volunteers to identify craters and boulders on the lunar surface.
You’ll find some of the most interesting projects on the “people-powered” Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org), including Shakespeare’s World which challenges you to transcribe handwritten documents from the bard’s contemporaries (see screenshot left). Deciphering 400-year-old manuscripts is just as tricky as detecting modern-day looting, but both are richly rewarding.