Explore Archaeological Wonders Like Indiana Jones Right At Home

A new online platform called "GlobalXplorer" is created by space archeologist Sarah Parcak and her team. It lets anyone discover archaeological wonders and fight looting.

National Geographic reported that Parcak, who pioneered the use of satellite imagery to discover lost cities and was described to be a hybrid of Indiana Jones and Google Earth, is planning on using the same technology for crowdsourcing to protect what remains of the ancient world.

In a press release, she said, "The world's hidden heritage contains clues to humankind's collective resilience and creativity." She also noted that the job of searching these remnants of the ancient world fall on archaeologists. There is no way for them to do everything on their own, considering that only about 1 percent of sites has even been identified.

Upon winning the coveted TED Prize in 2016, she put her prize money of a million dollars in investing the project of her choice, in the form of "GlobalXplorer." Phys.org noted that since the inception of the Annual TED Prize in 2005, it has grown from $100,000 to a million dollars, which is admirable, especially for the scientists around the globe.

She explained that every one of us are born explorers, so we would love to find more about ourselves and our past. Parcak's online platform can spot and decode culturally important ruins and decode them via high-res images captured by satellites and bring them to any user's fingertips. It can thus be used by anyone with an Internet connection.

According to NBC news, the platform, which was launched on Jan. 30, is stocked with imagery representing 77,220 square miles of sites in Peru. It is designed to inform archaeologists of the state of the area as well as to keep looters away from them.

The news site noted that the platform in itself can be helpful in disseminating information. It can provide users some perspective of current problems and can connect them to the scope of human history.