MORE than 2,00 years ago, an ancient nomadic people called Great Yuezhi roamed Central Asia along the Silk Road. They lived along the banks of rivers, and had roads and irrigation systems.
Now, their lost civilisation may be uncovered, with eyes from the skies, or more accurately, from space.
A team of Chinese remote-sensing experts and archaeologists is working with counterparts in Uzbekistan to establish a joint lab that intends to use space information technology and field archaeology methods to search for the ancient remains and to discover relics the ancient nomadic people.
Aided by Chinese and global remote sensing satellite data, Global Navigation Satellite System and geographic information system analytical tools are set to bring to light the age-old heritage more than 2,000 years ago out of the ancient river channels, springs, roads, lost oases and irrigation systems seen from the sky.
“Ancient cultural relics are ‘material evidence’ of human production and life in the past, which hold clues for us to understand today and the key to grasp the future,” said Wang Xinyuan, a professor from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who took part in the project and recently returned to China from Uzbekistan.
The ongoing collaborative work is part of the efforts of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries to promote the sharing of data from satellite imagery and other Earth observations across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to drive sustainable growth.
The BRI, consisting of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, and initiated by China a decade ago, aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa on and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes.
In 2016, Chinese scientists proposed the Digital Belt and Road (DBAR), a big Earth data framework under BRI, and it has received warm responses from and brought real benefits to its participating countries and organisations.
“Based on the methods and technological innovation of Big Earth Data, DBAR has served the sustainable development of BRI countries through sharing data, technology, and knowledge,” said Guo Huadong, chairman of the DBAR, at the 7th DBAR Conference last month.
Wang led a Chinese group to promote heritage-related programmes under DBAR. In 2016, it occurred to Wang and his overseas student from Tunisia that the landscape of the North African country is similar to northwestern China’s Gansu Province, where Wang once used remote-sensing technology to study royal road relics from the Tang Dynasty along the Silk Road.
Then, Wang’s team started the investigation while gaining support from Tunisian authorities.
They analysed remote sensing images from China’s Gaofen satellites image, ZY-3 density-sliced PAN image, and other satellites such as the WV-2 VHR image, Sentinel-2, and had three field trips together with local archaeologists in 2017 and 2018 to identify the precise locations by using the satellite navigation and positioning system.
In 2018, 10 previously unknown archaeological sites in southern Tunisia were discovered, including some Roman forts, limes, a water supply system, three giant basins, and a cemetery.
Those millenary ruins, dating back to ancient Roman times, unveiled the layout of the south-line military defence system and irrigation system in ancient Rome.
Scientists from China, Tunisia, Italy, and Pakistan took part in this DBAR-heritage project, and it was the first time Chinese scientists have discovered archaeological sites outside China using space information technologies.
DBAR’s contribution to heritage protection also included a long-term remote scan over Angkor Wat, the main temple in the Unesco-listed Angkor Archaeological Park in northwest Cambodia’s Siem Reap province.
Another group of scientists from the AIR has used remote sensing data from 1985 to 2016 to produce a “diagnostic report” on the relations between surface subsidence and the collapses of the ancient temple complex.
They identified that the seasonal changes in groundwater, thermal expansion and contraction of stone materials, and natural weathering triggered the temple’s abnormal deformation of about 1 to 2mm per year. The findings provided a more scientific basis for Angkor Wat preservation.
“The protection of the Silk Road heritage helps inherit splendid national cultures, enhance communications between nations, and promote mutual learning among civilisations,” said Wang.
A team led by Wu Bingfang, also from AIR, developed a cloud-based platform called CropWatch that provides analysis of global and regional agroclimatic conditions, crop growth assessments, arable land use monitoring, crop area estimation, yield predictions and prospects for the global food supply.
The CropWatch team has organised capacity-building workshops in 24 developing countries with more than 300 people from government agencies and research institutions trained in cloud-based agricultural monitoring.
After three technique training courses, Mozambique managed to use the CropWatch platform to “generate monthly agriculture bulletins during the rainy season,” said Hiten Jantilal, an official from the country’s ministry of agriculture and rural development.
The CropWatch platform has been used in more than 20 BRI countries, including Mozambique, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Kyrgyzstan. — Xinhua
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