"Space archaeology" transforms how ancient sites are discovered

Archaeologists often spend years digging and hoping they'll find the remnants of ancient civilizations. There's a lot of ground yet to be uncovered. Archaeologist Sarah Parcak says less than 10 percent of the Earth's surface has been explored, so she's leading the way to speed up the search. Parcak uses satellite photos to locate ancient sites and she's finding them -- thousands. It's called space archaeology and it's transforming the field. Sarah Parcak is a professor at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. We met her in Egypt doing what she loves most: digging in the dirt.

Our journey took us past the most famous archaeological site on Earth, the Pyramids of Giza rising from the Egyptian desert. Here and elsewhere, modern Egypt is built next to and often on top of ancient Egypt. From Cairo, we traveled 40 miles south and almost 4,000 years back in time to the village of Lisht. Today, the people of Lisht bury their dead in a cemetery at the edge of town, in the same place that ancient Egyptians buried their dead.