The archaeologist just got a camera that sees sixty years into the past. researchers retrained an…
the archaeologist just got a camera that sees sixty years into the past. researchers retrained an ai on declassified cold war corona spy satellite photos of iraq and found four previously unknown sites near abu ghraib, while confirming that 31 known tells had been completely erased by modern farming.
the most useful archive for finding lost cities may be one built for espionage.
Context
Verified source: PLOS One (Aug 18, 2025) published 'AI-ming backwards', a University of Bologna study that upgraded a deep learning model with CORONA imagery, declassified grayscale satellite photos from the 1960s, to detect archaeological sites in Mesopotamia. The University of Bologna magazine (Sep 3, 2025) says it revealed four previously unnoticed ancient settlements.
The CORONA imagery and the four previously unknown sites match PLOS One and the Bologna report. The study dates from Aug 2025, so it is not new in September 2026. The Abu Ghraib location, Iraq as the site and the 31 known tells erased by farming were not seen in the sources read, so unsupported here, not refuted. in the excerpts read, though the paper's title refers to vanishing landscapes. 'Sixty years into the past' and 'the best archive was built for espionage' are the author's framing.
Related work
- AI-ming backwards, PMC ↗Full text.
Watch next
- Read the paper for the area studied and how many known sites were found erased.
Sources
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 24 September 2026 at 20:52 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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