armchair discoveries

A long time ago, explorers made great voyages across the seas to discover the world. They spent a lot of money on massive ships, tons of supplies and crew members. They searched for unknown lands to conquer, traded products with other countries, made maps and sailed by the stars. It was a tough, expensive and dangerous adventure. It took them a long time to travel and some of them never even returned to their homeland.

Today, we can be an explorer and never leave our favorite couch. We can even multitask, navigating the Earth while watching our favorite TV show.  There's still a lot of ground to cover, and everyday, people see something cool and exciting.  Thanks to Google Earth, a lot of people have uncovered armchair discoveries. Here are two of the great ones found:

The Badlands Guardian
Alberta, Canada
50° 0'38.20"N 110° 6'48.32"W

You don't even have to squint to see a person wearing earphones and a native American headdress. It was found by Lynn Hickox, a 53 year old lady who lives in Canada.

"I was just looking around - I hadn't been on for long - and I just saw it. It jumped out at me," she said. "You had all those explorers who had to traipse miles and miles and here I am just sitting here at the computer with a mouse."

Soil erosion formed the face, while the earphone is a road and an oil well.  I'd like to believe that this was not a coincidence at all, but that it came from the spirit of an ancient Indian warrior and he's really here to guard the land.  Maybe this was his land before.  Then, maybe, a native elder somewhere will see this and recognize the face.  Oooh..

Anyway, after Lynn found it, she logged in on Google Earth forum as "Supergranny" to post her discovery. She became a bit of a celebrity in her hometown when a radio program held a contest to name her find. Some of the entries were Space Face, Chief Bleeding Ear, The Listening Rock, Jolly Rocker, Pod God, iChief, Chief M-P-Three and Az-tech.

An Ancient Roman Villa
near Parma, Italy
44.8819,10.4224

I'm having a hard time seeing it too

Luca Mori, a computer programmer from Italy, stumbled upon this one. He was going through the map of Sorbolo, Parma when he noticed strange shapes in their area-- an oval form about 500 meters long and rectangular shadows.

"At first I thought it was a stain on the photograph but when I zoomed in I saw that there was something under the earth," he said.

The National Archaeological Museum of Parma sent archeologists to investigate.

"At first they thought the site might be Bronze Age but a closer inspection turned up ceramic and stone pieces that showed it was a Roman villa built some time just before the birth of Christ", he said.

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Another fascinating place armchair explorers can go is deep into the ocean. They can visit shipwrecks, track the migration of whales and even see the underwater mountains and valleys in high resolution. It's amazing to see just how much technology can do today.

I found a great site that gathers all cool things found in Google Maps: http://www.mapofstrange.com/. Here's my favorite, elephants in Africa!

Sources:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/grans-canyon-sensation/2006/11/13/1163266420400.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/1498865/How-Google-unearthed-Roman-remains.html
http://www.travel-advocate.com/2009/02/05/armchair-explorers-venture-to-depths-of-oceans/