Cold War spy satellites reveal hundreds of Roman forts

2023-10-26 13:39:52

A previously undocumented alleged Roman outpost in the Syrian desert near the Turkish border – JESSE CASANA

MADRID, 26 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –

Hundreds of forts from the Roman Empire appear in old spy satellite images showing regions of Syria, Iraq and nearby territories of the “Fertile Crescent” of the Middle East.

These satellites were once used for reconnaissance in the 1960s and 1970s, but your data is now declassified. Some of his archived images now allow for new archaeological finds in areas of the Earth that are often difficult for researchers to visit.

The newly discovered 396 forts, seen directly from space, confirm and expand an aerial study of the region carried out in the 1920s; This study had recorded 116 forts on the eastern border of the Roman Empire. Archaeologists still agree with the basic conclusion of that nearly century-old study, which is that Rome was fortifying its borderand the new study provides a new perspective.

“These forts are similar in shape to many Roman forts in other parts of Europe and North Africa. There are many more forts in our study than elsewhere, but this may be because they are better preserved and easier to recognize” , told Space.com lead author Jesse Casana. “However, it could also have been a real product of intensive fort building, especially during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD”

The new results may confirm the suspicions of some previous scholars, who argued that the 116 forts from the 100-year-old study They were too far apart to form a connective line of defense. Instead, the camps in present-day Syria and Iraq were possibly used to protect caravans transporting valuable goods to and from Rome’s provinces, while that allowed intercultural communications and exchanges.

“Because these images preserve a high-resolution stereo perspective over a landscape that has been severely impacted by modern land-use changes, including urban expansion, agricultural intensification, and reservoir construction, they constitute a unique resource. for archaeological research,” say the authors of the study in their work, published on October 26 in Antiquity magazine.