Quotes from Sarah Parcak

I'm looking at looting photos from space, and there are people putting their lives on the line every day protecting their heritage. I call these people the real culture heroes.

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.

Archaeology holds all the keys to understanding who we are and where we come from.

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?

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?

Imagery is powerful. Imagery is provocative - satellite imagery much more so because it is from space, and it allows us to get this perspective that we don't have to have otherwise.

To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist.

I already find pyramids from space. Is there anything cooler than that?

The most exciting moment as an archaeologist happened when I was looking at the great archaeology site of Tannis, which of course we all know from 'Indiana Jones.' We got satellite imagery of the city of Tannis, we processed it, and literally from thousands of miles away from my lab in Alabama, we were able to map the entire city.

Discoveries aren't made by one person exploring by themselves. And discoveries aren't made overnight. People don't see the thousands of hours that go into it.

We have so many thousands of sites to find across the globe and new techniques to test. The field keeps evolving with the technology, which makes things exciting.

I am honored to receive the TED Prize, but it's not about me; it's about our field - and the thousands of men and women around the world, particularly in the Middle East, who are defending and protecting sites.

We've got to map all of our ancient history before it's gone because, let's face it, if we don't have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for?

I think archaeologists are stuck, and we are losing our past at a very rapid rate. Tens of thousands of sites will be lost, and we've only unveiled a tiny percent of the past.

Eventually, when I started studying Egyptology, I realized that seeing with my naked eyes alone wasn't enough. Because all of the sudden, in Egypt, my beach had grown from a tiny beach in Maine to one eight hundred miles long, next to the Nile.

Google Earth is an incredible resource because from hundreds of miles in space, we can zoom in, and we can find things. Everyone always looks for their house first. That is the tip of the iceberg with remote sensing.

Satellite datasets like WorldView can see objects as small as 1.5 feet in diameter. In 2014, WorldView-3 will be able to see objects a small as a foot.

A picture is worth a thousand words. A satellite image is worth a million dollars.

We can tell from the imagery a tomb was looted from a particular period of time, and we can alert INTERPOL to watch out for antiquities from that time that may be offered for sale.

People were looting tombs 5,000 years ago in Egypt as soon as people were buried, but the problem is only getting worse and worse.

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.

It's an important tool to focus where we're excavating. It gives us a much bigger perspective on archaeological sites. We have to think bigger, and that's what the satellites allow us to do.

I am one of many people documenting damage and looting at ancient sites from space - it is such a crucial tool.

What we did is we used NASA topography data to map out the landscape, very subtle changes. We started to be able to see where the Nile used to flow.