'Armchair' archaeologist sees Saudi sites

PERTH, Australia, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- An Australian researcher says he's found many potential archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia -- from his office in Perth, using satellite images from Google.

"I've never been to Saudi Arabia," David Kennedy at the University of Western Australia says. "It's not the easiest country to break into."

So Kennedy, sitting in his office chair, scanned 475 square miles of Saudi Arabia from his desktop computer using high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth and found 1977 potential archaeological sites, including 1082 "pendants" -- ancient tear-drop shaped stone tombs, NewScientist.com reported Friday.

Aerial photography of Saudi Arabia is not available to most archaeologists, Kennedy says, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to get permission to fly over the nation.

"But, Google Earth can outflank them," he says.

Kennedy says he was able to confirm the sites were the remains of ancient life, and not just vegetation or shadow, by asking a friend in Saudi Arabia, who is not an archaeologist, to drive out to two of the sites and photograph them.

Comparing the images with structures Kennedy has seen in Jordan, he says he believes the sites may be up to 9,000 years old, but that ground verification is critical.

"Just from Google Earth it's impossible to know whether we have found a Bedouin structure that was made 150 years ago, or 10,000 years ago," he says.

The science of "armchair archaeology" has blossomed since Google Earth was launched five years ago, and in 2008 researchers from Melbourne, Australia, found 463 potential sites in the Registan Desert in Afghanistan using the program, NewScientist.com said.