Sarah Parcak

Profession
Scientist

Sayings and Quotes

A picture is worth a thousand words. A satellite image is worth a million dollars.
Sarah Parcak
Words Picture Worth Image
Archaeology holds all the keys to understanding who we are and where we come from.
Sarah Parcak
Understanding Where Come Who
In archaeology, context is everything. Objects allow us to reconstruct the past. Taking artifacts from a temple or an ancient private house is like emptying out a time capsule.
Sarah Parcak
Time Past Temple House
Scorpions like holes. We had to put our arms in the holes to dig out the smelting residues. We always performed critter checks before an excavation, but one morning, I put an arm in and felt a sharp pierce. When I brought my hand out, it was red and already swelling.
Sarah Parcak
Morning Red Always Like
We're literally just beginning to learn how to use satellites to find sites. More and more people are realizing there's this incredible tool.
Sarah Parcak
People Beginning Find How
There's even an aircraft sensor system that sends down hundreds of thousands of pulses of light measured at different return rates. It allows you to literally strip away vegetation and see entire cities beneath the rain forest canopy. This is the unbelievable future of archaeology.
Sarah Parcak
Light Rain Future You
I dig in the sand, and I play with pretty pictures, so I never really left kindergarten.
Sarah Parcak
Pictures Never Sand Play
When I was a child growing up in Maine, one of my favorite things to do was to look for sand dollars on the seashores of Maine, because my parents told me it would bring me luck. But you know, these shells, they're hard to find. They're covered in sand. They're difficult to see.
Sarah Parcak
Me You Parents Luck
When you think about archaeology, archaeology is the only field that allows us to tell the story of 99 percent of our history prior to 3,000 B.C. and writing.
Sarah Parcak
History You Think Writing
When you think about the scale of human populations all over the world and the fact that there's so much here, really, the only way to be able to visualize that is to pull back in space... It allows us to see hidden temples and tombs and pyramids and even entire settlements.
Sarah Parcak
You World Space Way
Less than 1 percent of ancient Egypt has been discovered and excavated. With population pressures, urbanization, and modernization encroaching, we're in a race against time. Why not use the most advanced tools we have to map, quantify, and protect our past?
Sarah Parcak
Time Past Egypt Race
To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist.
Sarah Parcak
Dream Pyramid Every
We have so many issues with overpopulation and urbanization and site looting. And this isn't just Egypt. This is everywhere in the world, even in America. So we only have a limited amount of time left before many archaeological sites all over the world are destroyed.
Sarah Parcak
Time World America Egypt
Satellites record data in different parts of the light spectrum that we can't see. And it's that information that allows satellites to be so powerful in terms of looking at things like vegetation health, finding different kinds of geology that may indicate an oil deposit or some kind of mineralogical deposit that can be mined.
Sarah Parcak
Light Health Looking Powerful
All over the world, we're finding out that, you know, whether it's Egypt or Syria or Central America, what satellites are showing is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of previously unknown settlements all over the world, and what archaeology does, it helps us to understand this common humanity that we have.
Sarah Parcak
You World America Humanity
When a wall is slowly covered over by earth, the materials it's made from decay and become part of the soils around and above it, sometimes causing vegetation above and next to the wall to grow faster or slower. Satellite imagery helps archaeologists to pick up these subtle changes.
Sarah Parcak
Sometimes Grow Earth Changes
If you really want to be a good archaeologist, you have to understand ancient DNA; you have to understand chemical analysis to figure out the composition of ancient pots. You have to be able to study human remains. You need to be able to do computer processing and, in some cases, computer programming.
Sarah Parcak
Good You Understand Want
I am part of a network of people monitoring what's happening at ancient sites in Iraq and Syria - from space. We can see clearly the destruction.
Sarah Parcak
I Am People Space See
Looting has an immense impact on our ability to understand our global cultural heritage; once these objects are gone, so too is our chance of piecing together humanity's shared story.
Sarah Parcak
Together Humanity Chance Understand

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How wonderful it would be to scatter words as they rise to consciousness, to let them lie where they fall.
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Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.
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I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words.
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Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
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Doing Worth Done Things
When I think about the songs I might record, I ask myself, 'Can I picture anybody I know back home sitting in their truck cranking this up?'
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Myself Home Picture Think
I do have a problem with someone that just wants a picture. People who ask for a selfie and don't even say hello to you, it's a weird thing that's happened in the last few years.
Rag'n'Bone Man
You People Picture Weird
I think the Dutch certainly get British comedy. And let's face it; a lot of it is pretty low-hanging fruit for the whole world now. There are probably tribes in the heart of the Papua New Guinean rainforest that know all the words to the Dead Parrot sketch.
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Heart Face World Words
I don't really care where movies come from as long as they're worth making.
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Care Long Movies Worth