Thanks to satellite photographs of the entire surface of the Earth, scientists were able to explore areas where it never occurred to anyone to send scientific expeditions, as well as to look at places that had been studied long ago from a new angle. Over the past few years, Google Earth has made a number of important discoveries. Sometimes these discoveries are made by completely random people.

Remains of an ancient Roman villa, Italy, 2005

One of the very first archaeological discoveries made in Google Earth took place in 2005. Ironically, the author of the discovery, local resident Luca Mori, launched the program just to explore the area near his native Parma. Quite unexpectedly, he noticed some strange oval artifact in the fields near the city.


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Luca Mori took him for a computer glitch, but still informed the specialists of the National Archaeological Museum, who organized the expedition. Immediately after the start of the excavation, they discovered ancient ceramics and the remains of an ancient Roman villa built before our era.

Australopithecus sediba 2 million years old, South Africa, 2008

Brave paleoanthropologist Lee Berger went to the brave exploration of South Africa, launching Google Earth in the comfort of his office. Professor began to explore the area of ​​limestone caves in South Africa, which is known to scientists as the cradle of humanity .

Berger found on the satellite imagery previously unknown caves suitable for ancient people. In 2008 he organized a semi-amateur expedition, taking with him only one student, as well as a son and a dog. At the site, they found about fifty suspected Australopithecus residences (higher primates, two-running hominids with a small brain volume).

Visiting one of the caves, the father sent a 9-year-old son to look around, and after 15 minutes he brought a stone with perfectly preserved petrified fragments of the clavicle and lower jaw. Excavations at the site allowed us to find other fragments of the skeletons of a woman and a teenager, whose age is estimated at 1.78-1.95 Ma.



The importance of this discovery is that the samples found belong to a new, previously unknown Australopithecus species, very similar to humans. It was exactly two million years ago that the highest primates began to walk on two legs, use tools and form the beginnings of speech. A new species called Australopithecus sediba (Australopithecus sediba). Perhaps it is this species that is the ancestor of the Skillful Man, that is, a transitional link from ape-like hominids to people of the modern species.


^{Lee Berger and fragments of a skeleton belonging to Australopithecus sediba.}

Rainforest on Mount Mabu, Mozambique, 2008

In the satellite photographs of northern Mozambique, the English scientist Julian Bayliss discovered a completely unknown “oasis” - an isolated tropical forest located high in the mountains in a hard-to-reach place. It turned out that this forest is known to locals, but there has never been equipped with a scientific expedition. But such isolated areas are extremely interesting for biologists, because they often find new species of animals and plants there. Mount Mabu did not disappoint - in 2008 an expedition was sent there, the results of which are still being studied. In total, more than a hundred (!) New species were discovered - plants, birds, butterflies, monkeys, snakes - in just three weeks. This rainforest experts jokingly call Google Forest.

Stone artifacts, Saudi Arabia, 2011

Like the wilds of Mozambique, the deserts of Saudi Arabia are exceptionally unfriendly to researchers and travelers. In early 2011, Australian scientist David Kennedy (David Kennedy) decided that it would be easier to first explore the area on satellite images, than to look for something in the sands. The study of the desert meter by meter bore fruit - more than 2,000 places were discovered, on which something is viewed. These coordinates were listed, and the on-site study made it possible to detect several thousand different artifacts of ancient civilization — stone wheels, bird traps, strangely-shaped tombs, and much more. Artifacts scattered across a vast territory from Syria to Yemen are over 9000 years old.

Ancient Pyramids, Peru, 2008

In 2008, scientists were able to detect a large number of ancient pyramids under a layer of soil in the desert of Peru, combining images of Google Earth with infrared photography.



Pyramids were found under a field of wheat, a kilometer away from the famous Nazca geoglyphs - groups of giant geometric figures, each one hundred meters in size (triangles, spirals, bird, monkey, spider, flowers). These geoglyphs were noticed only in the 20th century, when an airplane flew over them. Due to the gigantic size of the drawings can not be viewed from the ground.