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Text: Pamela Logan
The ruins of Subashi, at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert.
Key to the project is a revolutionary remote sensing device alled SIR-C.
Carried by Space Shuttle Endeavor in two 1994 flights, SIR-C has the potential to reveal man-made artifacts hidden for two thousand years beneath desert sands. Since 1994 project coordinator Pamela Logan have spent many hours in the computer labs of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, processing and enhancing SIR-C radar images of the Taklamakan, identifying unnatural-looking features that hint at the presence of man.
In 1997 CERS shifted its focus to wildlife programs, leaving the Silk Road project high and dry. At that time I met an American archeologist
named Adam Kessler whose lifelong passion has been to investigate China's ancient world.
He was looking for people to help him form the Eurasian Origins Foundation,
a non-profit organization dedicated to researching early civilizations on the Eurasian continent. Together we are seeking funding for a joint American-Chinese expedition
into the deep desert of the Taklamakan to ground truth SIR-C images and possibly discover previously unknown archeological sites.
Ruins discovered elsewhere in the
Tarim Basin have produced artifacts such as tombs, temples, frescoes, statues, and scrolls--crucial clues that allow us to track migration of peoples and ideas across Eurasia.
