Astronauts' personal photographs with hand-held cameras during the early space missions gave Earth's inhabitants a new view of their home: a fragile and subtly-coloured globe, suspended in a black void. Now, several dozen satellites stream back images which routinely illustrate weather-forecasts and environmental news-stories. Once available only to the military, these are routinely made available by agencies such as NASA, and high-resolution imagery (at scales comparable to aerial photographs) is widely available commercially. These images allow a "zoom" from a global to a local view, giving a better appreciation of the settings of ancient sites both within their immediate landscapes and in the context of corridors of communication with a wider world.
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Western Asia |
South-East Europe |
South America |
You can also explore the position of these sites yourself by using an interactive world map, or by downloading a Virtual Globe extension for Google Earth or NASA Worldwind.
Co-ordinates of sites are given in decimal degrees.
All images on this page: NASA