Albert Lin may search for lost cities and occasionally wear a wide-brimmed hat, but he and Indiana Jones couldn't be more different in their methods.
While Indy had to settle for nothing more high-tech than his whip, this true explorer brings the best technology to the market.
Using state-of-the-art tools, Albert has discovered hidden cities of the past everywhere from Scotland to Sudan.
But searching the world for ancient ruins isn't always easy or safe.
Speaking to Web, Albert revealed that while searching for a mysterious civilization in Israel he was inches away from being crushed by a boulder – and only survived thanks to his prosthetic leg.
Albert and Indiana Jones may share a love of hats and adventure, but their techniques couldn't be more different
Albert Lin is a real-life Indiana Jones who has searched the world to discover the lost cities and civilizations of the past
Who is the “real Indiana Jones” Albert Lin?
Albert Lin is a National Geographic Explorer who uses technology to rediscover lost cities.
He is also a research scientist at UC San Diego and holds a doctorate in engineering.
He received his first research grant from National Geographic to search for the lost tomb of Genghis Khan in Mongolia.
The technology he developed for search has since been used in projects ranging from search and rescue operations to humanitarian surveillance and environmental monitoring.
Albert Lin is a real Indiana Jones
While Indiana Jones may always be able to ride off into the sunset, the dangers of exploration have real consequences in the real world.
Ahead of the release of his new documentary series, Lost Cities Revealed with Albert Lin, Albert recalls an event that highlighted these consequences.
Albert and his team filmed in Israel in search of the lost city of Canaanites, a mysterious civilization that survived a climate apocalypse from biblical times.
Their expedition had taken them to a cliff in the desert – a difficult undertaking, but one that did not have to worry an experienced climber like Albert.
Despite losing his leg in a Jeep accident years earlier, Albert believes in showing other amputees the limits of what is possible, and so he soon scales the rock face.
“I'm climbing up the side of a cliff and as I go up the boulder I'm standing on starts to open like a door and I feel my body falling back,” he told Web.
The boulder, loosened by the rain, detached from the cliff face and sent Albert plummeting into the depths, sending several hundred pounds of rock tumbling down.
He said, “I'm going to jump off the cliff as far as I can and wait for the boulder to kill me.”
When the dust settled, it appeared he escaped with nothing more than a few cuts and bruises.
But as he stood up, Albert realized that the boulder hadn't missed him after all – Albert's leg had been shattered to pieces under the rock.
But the stone landed on the leg he had lost years before, which could have been either incredible or terrible luck.
It was his prosthetic leg that had been shattered while everything else remained unharmed.
On an expedition to Israel in search of the Canaanite kingdom, Albert was nearly killed by a falling boulder
Albert has survived his recent adventures unscathed, although his prosthetic leg was crushed in the climbing accident
“It was hard to see that trauma again in the form of losing a leg. “As far as I know, I am the only amputee who has lost the same leg twice,” he said.
“But you have to dust these things off, right?” It was a very intense moment, but at the same time it just doesn't feel like work to me, but like something bigger.
“We are trying to uncover stories from our ancient past, and each story might reveal something about our shared humanity.”
“For me, these extreme experiences are worth it.”
In the latest season of his series “National Geographic, Lost Cities Revealed with Albert Lin,” Albert travels the world in search of the lost cities of the past.
His journey took him around the world, from the forgotten Pictish settlements of Scotland to the Peruvian Andes in search of the lost Chachapoya Kingdom.
Using the same techniques he developed years earlier in Mongolia while searching for the lost tomb of Genghis Khan, Albert employs cutting-edge technology to bring these settlements to life.
Drones equipped with LiDAR scanners search large areas for disturbances caused by underground structures.
This technique involves bouncing lasers off the ground to create an accurate map of the ground, revealing tiny raised areas that reveal hidden structures beneath the ground.
Ground-penetrating radar and satellite images then further refine the search, revealing vast complexes once thought to be non-existent.
His search has since taken him to Oman, Peru and Scotland (pictured) to look for signs of the world's forgotten civilizations
Albert says that since his first expedition to Mongolia, he has been looking for a way to look at history from a new perspective.
“The invention of the microscope or telescope changed the world in terms of the way we can see things,” he said.
“This moment is the same for archeology with the invention of things like LiDAR.”
These tools have opened up a whole new era of archaeological discoveries.
Most recently, a trove of Cold War-era satellite images allowed researchers to find hundreds of previously lost Roman thoughts.
Even in the unexplored jungles of eastern Mexico, archaeologists have used laser scanning to uncover an ancient Mayan city with 50-foot-tall pyramids.
Albert says: “These lenses allow us to see things like that there were actually thousands of pyramids hidden in the jungle that we didn't know about, or that there is something right under the sand that you can only see with ground-penetrating radar can.” '
“Every time we find a new story through research, we find a new way to look at it.”
“It feels like we are uncovering a part of the common book of human history.” “Every city has a chapter or a page, and when you put all those pages together you get to the present day.”
Albert believes that uncovering these stories helps us find the “essence of the humanity that existed in each of these different chapters.”
He said: “When you look at them as a whole, you get a fuller picture of the essence of what is inside you, no matter where you come from.”
Albert says his discoveries help us understand what is common to humanity and time
As someone who is “literally a part of technology,” Albert says the past can help us think about our relationship with technology today
As someone who is “a part of technology in every sense of the word,” Albert says that looking to the past can help us understand our relationship with technology today.
Albert, who originally trained as an engineer, describes himself as a “die-hard optimist”.
However, he also believes that our march toward progress is leading us to a point of no return.
“I think we are at a transformative moment in our human history where our interconnectedness is greater than ever before,” Albert said.
“The distance has been recreated and we truly live in a global village, but we still struggle with the echoes of that tribalism we grew up with.”
As AI becomes more and more a part of our daily lives, Albert says it will become increasingly important to reflect on our shared history.
Albert and his team have found evidence that even during the world's worst disasters, people came together to celebrate and work together
“Perhaps at this moment, as we face the confrontation of our own co-evolution with AI, it is important that we reflect on what truly makes us human, what we are struggling to preserve in the face of this situation.” Existential mirror,” he said.
On the same expedition to Israel in which Albert almost died, he also made a discovery that he says still resonates today.
Some scientists believe that over 4,000 years ago, Earth experienced a devastating, decade-long drought called the “4.2-kiloyear event.”
Albert suggests that this event may well have led to the collapse of the ancient kingdoms of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
But as the world of ancient Canaan faced the greatest climate catastrophe in human history, he found that humans had gathered supplies and resources from across the ancient world.
“This was the collapse of the great civilization of our past, but what you see in this one village are huge piles of thousands of wine jars and artifacts from all over the world,” says Albert.
“Essentially, people came together to celebrate, but they also came together to share and collaborate to meet this global moment.”
Albert says his travels through time have led him to believe in the power of human cooperation and describes himself as a “die-hard optimist.”
So as we turn to our own chapter of human history, Albert believes we can learn important lessons from our collective history and the lost cities of the past.
Albert says: “I have had a career in which I have been able to travel all over the world, and I have also been able to travel back in time to the origins of our human evolution.”
“I think what I've observed throughout humanity and throughout time is that we have a choice, and what has always worked really well for us is when we work together.”
“Having been born in the Bay Area as the .com era was unfolding, I think the great hope of the innovators who created this was that we could come together, and now it's up to us to choose to do so .”
Lost Cities with Albert Lin airs Sundays at 6pm GMT on National Geographic and begins with The Barbarian Kingdom on December 17th.
If you have any questions for Albert or a suggestion for where he should explore next, you can find him on Instagram at @exploreralbert.
How does Albert Lin use technology to search for lost cities?
LiDAR
With Light Detection and Ranging, surface data of entire landscapes can be collected by reflecting laser pulses from distant objects.
Importantly, this technique can penetrate vegetation to capture the soil surface.
This allows archaeologists to search dense jungles like those in Peru
By searching for ground disturbances, Albert searched for archaeological remains
Ground radar (GPR)
GPR sends electromagnetic pulses into the ground at regular intervals and measures the time until the pulse bounces back.
This allows teams to create maps of underground structures in three dimensions.
The pulses even penetrate modern materials such as concrete and asphalt, meaning GPR can also be used in urban areas.
Satellite images
In Mongolia, Albert and his team used satellites to scan vast areas for hidden tombs.
Satellites can capture images across the entire light spectrum, revealing details invisible to the human eye.
Satellites produce huge amounts of data, so Albert used crowdsourcing and AI to process the images.
In Scotland, Albert used GPR to uncover an ancient Pictish settlement