Cold War Spy-Satellite Images Unveil Lost Cities

A study of Cold War spy-satellite photos has tripled the number of known archaeological sites across the Middle East, revealing thousands of ancient cities, roads, canals, and other ruins.

I sometimes wonder, what we could accomplish as a nation, as a species, if we could just put as much effort in education and science that we do in killing each other.

Going over Sat images from 1961... A team has found NUMEROUS ancient lost sites in the Middle east, that until now, was only privy of the intelligence community and not Academia.

"Some of these sites are gigantic, and they were completely unknown," says atlas-team archaeologist Jesse Casana of the University of Arkansas, who presented the results. "We can see all kinds of things—ancient roads and canals. The images provide a very comprehensive picture."

The team had started with a list of roughly 4,500 known archaeological sites across the Middle East, says Casana. The spy-satellite images revealed another 10,000 that had previously been unknown.

Cold war spy satellites

If these places have been known by the governments since the 60s, then they have most likely been through the entire site and taken away all of the best information that was there.
There is so much important ancient information that is locked away from the people of the world, it makes you wonder why? What could be so big that needs to be hidden away from everyone?

Fascinating.

I am aware that secret intel is needed as people can be crazy and dangerous... nation-states, too, but limited access to this satellite tech for a select handful of archeologists wouldn't be a bad idea.

Really, I'd like full academic access ... but if wishes were fishes, women wouldn't need bicycles... or something like that.

a reply to: benrl

That is a cool picture, it really looks like a nuke went off in the center of town.

I sometimes wonder, what we could accomplish as a nation, as a species, if we could just put as much effort in education and science that we do in killing each other.

I hear this a lot and the reality is that we have managed to drastically reduce our wars and killing over the centuries and decades and it continues to improve despite the rhetoric.

Also, science and exploration has never been so widespread and successful. Analysis and theory have also exploded so I am of the opinion that things are actually pretty good and getting better.

Think positive Abenham!

originally posted by: JHumm
If these places have been known by the governments since the 60s, then they have most likely been through the entire site and taken away all of the best information that was there.
There is so much important ancient information that is locked away from the people of the world, it makes you wonder why? What could be so big that needs to be hidden away from everyone?

Well, that is an interesting thought.

Much of the ancient world liked gold just as much as we do, I don't know about taking the knowledge, but I could certainly see financial motivations to recover artifacts from the larger of sites.

Add to that modern sats can detect underground structures and I wonder how much the Intelligence community has, that it either doesn't know, or doesn't care what it is as well.

originally posted by: greencmp

Also, science and exploration has never been so widespread and successful. Analysis and theory have also exploded so I am of the opinion that things are actually pretty good and getting better.

Think positive Abenham!

Well a good point, I would add, imagine how much more we would know and be able to do, if instead of spending a few mill on a drone, it went straight to scientific research instead.

Yes War advances science, there is no question of that, we see the results all around us. I just wonder what would be if humanity could suppress its baser instincts for 5 minutes.

Anyone else see that 830 feet in diameter (250 meters) crater from an explotion of sorts in the middle of that city? Ancient war weapons? Ancient nukes?

-MM

originally posted by: MerkabaMeditation

Anyone else see that 830 feet in diameter (250 meters) crater from an explotion of sorts in the middle of that city? Ancient war weapons? Ancient nukes?

-MM

Yea, That is kinda of intriguing, that ring around the city the faint line.

Greencmp mentioned it as well...

Could be other reasons its taken so long to be reviewed by academics.

I'm so confused. Why are they looking at images from 1961 when they can see this on Google Earth now?

Wouldn't Google Earth show the same areas?

originally posted by: JohnPhoenix
I'm so confused. Why are they looking at images from 1961 when they can see this on Google Earth now?

Wouldn't Google Earth show the same areas?

Spy sats have a far higher resolution, as well as imaging capabilities that tend to show hidden details around that could be obscured through natural camo, or intentional.

whats shown in the article is a compressed image, a true spy sat image would be huge in resolution, they tended to use Large format film photography.

Things that we are just starting to get into the Gigapixel range digitally that would match.

Oh I see.. the article says.

In recent decades archaeologists have often used declassified satellite images to spot archaeological sites in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria.

They do this because it's a way to go back in time before the new city sprung up around it. I pulled up the same area Tell Rifaat on Google Earth and you can tell the city has really grown up over the past 50 years.

Interesting but if they are not allowed to act on this info.. especially if these sites are now destroyed or covered up by a new city how will this info help them? Just to say we knew it was there at one time?

The more information that comes to light, the more it would appear that earth was much more populated than current accepted history tells us.

Evidence of nuclear type explosions, legends of men who traveled in space, petroglyphs of men in space suits indicates the possibility of a much more advanced civilization than science is willing to acknowledge.

Underground cities that could hold and sustain thousands! Is it possible that humanity survived a cataclysmic event by dwelling underground for a period of time? Is it possible that some elite factions know this?

The untold millions that have been spent on building underground cities, world wide, makes me pause for reflection. The seed vault being stocked and sealed prior to the massive implementation of GMO's also gives me food for 'conspiracy' type thoughts.

If it's true history repeats itself, just how advanced could a previous civilization have been before it nearly destroyed all traces of its' existence?

S&F

originally posted by: MerkabaMeditation

Anyone else see that 830 feet in diameter (250 meters) crater from an explotion of sorts in the middle of that city? Ancient war weapons? Ancient nukes?

-MM

I thought that is a mound given based on the shadows of the building in relation to the dark side of the mound.

I'm not 100% sure, hard to tell.

originally posted by: JHumm
If these places have been known by the governments since the 60s, then they have most likely been through the entire site and taken away all of the best information that was there.
There is so much important ancient information that is locked away from the people of the world, it makes you wonder why? What could be so big that needs to be hidden away from everyone?

perhaps some comfort can be taken, these were declassified in 1992, they should have brought to the attention of academia before then, WAY before then, but at least they haven't been holding onto them for another 50 years in secret. Great point tho... Maybe somebody, somewhere got something useful from these sites, but unless it was ... Magical or able to be sold for some exorbitant amount, my hope is that the "geek"(lover of history, geek is a lack for a better term) has actually introduced it to academia. Wishful thinking perhaps.

I've often pondered how much technology and history has been lost to wars, and the burning of villages, cities, libraries, universities... There was probably a "great" military man who was quickly promoted when he suggested stealing/confiscating some of his enemies technologies rather than destroying them...

Corona satellites photographed the Earth in swaths 120 miles (193 kilometers) long by 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide. Film strips were delivered from space inside parachute-equipped buckets, and the film's stretched and distorted views of the Earth required special optics to sort out. The existence of the photographs was officially kept secret until 1992.

Parachutes!? Buckets!? #%* ya high tech #%^

As for the crater and ring, looks like a mound and perhaps the outline of a wall? Many ancient cities had walls, I'm not familiar with this exact location, perhaps it was never walled in?

With all those trails paths and roads it doesn't look lost to me

a reply to: six67seven

Indeed though I believe that an ancient war and a lost age of technology are factual despite little or no accepted mainstream evidence you are correct in you observation, that looks to me to be an ancient eroded ziggurat or similar structure which the outher ring would have been a defencive ditch or wall/both and in all likelyhood the site itself is on a hill that can not be seen due to sun angle and downward view, much of the site appears to have been destroyed by later agriculture and farmers removing stones from there field's or reusing them elsewhere (ninevah was found after locals told of a hill that was a good place to dig for bricks).
That being said there used to be story's of satellite photographs held by the intelligence services which showed huge ancient road systems older than any known civilization which led to devasted area's where they terminated, these area's though overgrown had no ruin's but lot's of road like connection's as if the destruction was total, I searched through an early issue of google earth and found something that may have been of interest on the canadian/alaskan side of the arctic circle which looked like a perfect streight road or rail line but broken in places leading to feint grid like pattern in the tundra about the size of a modern city but then the area was a hive of top secret activity during the cold war and whom know's what asset's may still be hidden there by both former and renewed protagonists form the old cold war the new one.
In the story's though areas with grid patterns and road's like modern highway's were mentioned in the amazon and other rainforrests detected by sattelites as well as cratered ruin's.
On a similar vain there are some Extremely road like structure's and possible ruins on our nearest planetary neighbour (and allegedly on the moon as well)

www.youtube.com...

In this day and age any recovery of ancient artifacts is something that the intelligence services would deny and any technology would likely have degraded to a point far beyond any reversable engineering state unless it was in orbit and that is an entire other thread but here is something about craters in ruins on earth,

ancientnuclearwar.com...

www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

jcolavito.tripod.com...

www.youtube.com...

But craters on the ground are early nuclear type devices which today are called crust crackers and outlawed by international convention as they throw so much radio active debris into the atmosphere they spread the devastation over more than one target area and country, instead today we have a technology called airburst which means that at optimum altitude the nuclear device will detonate over a city or target to cause maximum damage with minimum fallout (there is still a mushroom cloud and still vast amounts of fallout), now of course in the age of deep underground military base's the crust cracker is back on the cards as little else with dent them but a high yield nuclear device used in a shaped explosion at or near ground level will devastate even miles deep bases under dense granite or basalt, indeed solid granit or basalt can be used to dissipate or channel the shock wave and mixed strata provide the best shelter.
Old bases such as Yementu in russia and Norad in the states are so weakened due to a lack of mixed stratification over them and devices for destroying such were definitely developed during the cold war but perhaps not tested.
Are all the DUMB's bases though or could some be excavations of a more intriguing nature.

originally posted by: OuttaOC

Parachutes!? Buckets!? #%* ya high tech #%^

Yes, the spy sats of old could have its own thread just on the amazing nature of how they got the film from some of them.

originally posted by: JohnPhoenix
Oh I see.. the article says.

In recent decades archaeologists have often used declassified satellite images to spot archaeological sites in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria.

They do this because it's a way to go back in time before the new city sprung up around it. I pulled up the same area Tell Rifaat on Google Earth and you can tell the city has really grown up over the past 50 years.

Interesting but if they are not allowed to act on this info.. especially if these sites are now destroyed or covered up by a new city how will this info help them? Just to say we knew it was there at one time?

Well it is like a jigsaw as they try to piece together the best model they can of these periods in history and prehistory but a jigsaw with many missing and badly fitting pieces so even though the site may be irrecoverable they at least can place a poor piece into a hole in there model and try to connect it with ancient trace route's etc, the settlement may indicate other near by sites also and show area's and population's not only important to modern archeaology but also climatology and the study of the shifting climat of the earth in these and neighbouring regions thus allowing them to construct a more thorough and concise climate model and enabling them to create more accurate projections of possible climate change in the future.

Im curious as to "how" these cities are considered lost. The surrounding area, right up to the city, is ag developed. So obviously somebody has known it was there for awhile.

The crater is interesting too. But we cant discount modern warheads or old WW1/2 explosions. Hell for all we know some local fighters may have tried to turn it into a command post and got droned.

Either way, very interesting. And it gives credibility to those thinking there are so many ancient cities yet to be discovered.

a reply to: benrl

I have actually played around with the map overlays for some days now, it's very detailed and interesting.

People should try it out.

Corona Atlas of the Middle East

Btw; i think the crater is a mount not a crater.