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The contours of ancient Egyptian homes and other buildings appear in infrared imagery because they were constructed from mud brick, a dense material that stands out from surrounding soil. As a result, the satellite images showed both known archaeological sites that have been studied and excavated for decades and other ancient treasures ostensibly buried deep beneath the sand

For Parcak, the precise mapping afforded by the technology has the potential to shed light on the daily lives of ancient Egyptians and the relationship they had with their natural environment.

De Soto’s expedition through the southeastern United States in 1539–43 was one of the earliest of the early contacts between Europeans and native peoples. Research on the expedition has contributed in no small way to the “quantum leap” in our understanding of the age. In a cluster of related projects that have drawn on an unusual cross-fertilization between historical and archaeological research, a group of scholars in the Southeast is attempting to plot the route that de Soto took, as a way of understanding the “social geography” of the native societies he met. The work on the de Soto expedition offers a revealing snapshot of the growing body of research on the earliest encounters between the civilizations of Europe and the Americas.

Hoping to find the riches that other Spanish explorers had discovered in Central and South America, de Soto landed in May 1539 near Tampa Bay, Fla., with about 600 men, a few hundred horses, packs of dogs, and a large herd of pigs. The army set out north and west through Florida.

The combination of good sailing and lousy farming tends to make Greeks try to get a living from the sea.

There are several active volcanoes, and earthquakes are also very common. There is a nervous feeling that there could be a natural disaster at any time. This got the Greeks interested in a particular kind of religion which we call oracles. Oracles are the gods speaking to people, often in the form of minor earthquakes, and the gods tell the people what is going to happen in the future.

There used to be quite a lot of trees on the hillsides of Greece, but people cut most of them down, and now the hills of Greece are mostly bare, or have little bushes on them.

As the fortunes of merchants, bankers, and tradespeople improved, they had more than enough money to meet their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. They began to desire larger, more luxurious homes, fine art for these residences, sumptuous clothing to show off their wealth in public, and exotic delicacies to eat. These desires of the middle class stimulated the economy.