September 15, 2005

Googling a Roman Villa

News@Nature.com reports that an Italian computer programmer, Luca Mori, discovered a Roman Villa while studying Google Maps and Google Earth satellite pictures of the region around his town of Sorbolo, near Parma, Italy.

His eye was caught by unusual 'rectangular shadows' nearby. Curious, he analysed the image further, and concluded that the lines must represent a buried structure of human origin. Eventually, he traced out what looked like the inner courtyards of a villa.

Archaeologists later confirmed that he was correct. Interestingly, at first the archaeologists thought it was a Bronze Age village but soon realized that it was a Roman villa. Another interesting thing about this is that an amateur was able to get the attention of professionals by doing his homework and likely not exaggerating his claims.

Supposedly, if your Italian is better than mine, you can read about it on Mori's blog. However, I was unable to access his site. I will keep trying.

Posted by DuaneSmith at September 15, 2005 04:10 PM | Read more on Archaeology |

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://WWW.telecomtally.com/cgi-bin/blog/mt-tb.cgi/329

Comments

Post a comment

Please read Abnormal Interest's Comments Policy.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember Me?


Comments:

The following HTML tags are allowed in comments:

and no others.