Structures likely protected traders rather than being actively used in warfare
In the 1920s, Jesuit priest Antoine Poidebard spotted the angular outlines of what he suspected were ancient Roman forts while flying over the Syrian desert in a biplane. In what was one of the earliest aerial archaeological surveys, the French aviator went on to map and photograph more than 100 outposts strung along a 1000-kilometer arc between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Casana usually excavates Mesopotamian sites in northern Iraq, often using CORONA and other declassified satellite images to find ruins. But with fieldwork on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, he and his team turned their attention to black-and-white images of an adjacent region: the sprawling 300,000-square-kilometer Syrian plateau. Dividing the area into 5-kilometer squares, they hunted for signatures of humanmade structures that stood out against the dry desert backdrop.
The spy satellite images, however, showed something different. Rather than a single line of small forts running north to south, the newer photos revealed hundreds more running east to west. “We can see Poidebard’s distribution was false,” Casana says. “In reality, there’s a huge number that extend from the eastern Mediterranean to the Tigris River.”
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