{"id":644586,"date":"2026-05-02T16:31:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T14:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=644586"},"modified":"2026-05-02T17:25:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T15:25:59","slug":"professor-in-south-africa-who-used-aerial-lasers-to-unearth-an-ancient-lost-tswana-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/science\/644586-professor-in-south-africa-who-used-aerial-lasers-to-unearth-an-ancient-lost-tswana-capital.html","title":{"rendered":"Professor in South Africa who used aerial lasers to unearth an ancient lost Tswana capital"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2018, a team of researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand, led by renowned archaeologist Karim Sadr, used laser technology to reveal the ancient, ruined Tswana capital of Kweneng.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team employed Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to penetrate the heavily forested hills of the Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve, revealing what the lost city looked like around the year 1400.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Sadr’s initial announcement<\/a>, he was inspired by similar uses of the technology to reveal ancient and lost cities across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There are lost cities all over the world. Some, like the remains of Mayan cities hidden beneath a thick canopy of rainforest in Mesoamerica, are found with the help of laser lights,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Now the same technology which located those Mayan cities has been used to rediscover a southern African city that was occupied from the 15th century until about 200 years ago.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadr was born in Tehran, the capital of Iran, and travelled the globe conducting archaeological research in Sudan, Egypt and Botswana before settling in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He contributed to fieldwork in North, Central and South America, as well as in Europe and Africa, but his focus is on African archaeology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadr completed his PhD in Anthropology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, with a thesis focusing on the origins of pastoral nomadism in northeast Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He first came to South Africa in 1990 as a Postdoctoral Fellow to work with Professor Andrew Smith at the University of Cape Town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a brief period working in Botswana, Sadr finally settled in Gauteng and joined Wits University in 2001, serving as the Head of the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of 2019, Sadr had around one hundred publications to his name. At Wits, he focused on the use of geospatial technologies in the study of pre-colonial stone-walled settlements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This focus led him to the use of LiDAR at the Kweneng site, which was a known settlement location for decades. It was not until Sadr’s research that the true scope of the city emerged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadr explained that researchers from Wits had excavated several ancient Tswana ruins in and around the Suikerbosrand hills, about 60 km south of Johannesburg, four or five decades ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But from ground level and on aerial photos, the full extent of this settlement could not be appreciated because vegetation hides many of the ruins,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But LiDAR, which uses laser light, allowed my students and I to create images of the landscape and virtually strip away the vegetation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that the technology created an unimpeded aerial view of the ancient buildings and monuments that once stood in Kweneng.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laser technology unveiled an ancient city<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Render of the stone-walled compounds that comprised the city of Kweneng<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For his specific research at Kweneng, Sadr commissioned a specialised survey that employed a high-precision laser scanner mounted on an aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though he did not invent the technology, the research at the site was the first instance in Southern African archaeology of LiDAR being used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The specific laser device used bombards the landscape with billions of laser pulses \u2014 four or five hundred per square metre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“As soon as each pulse hits an object, any solid object, a bird or a leaf or a tree or the ground, it reflects straight back to the machine,” said Sadr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0“Then the machine can figure out where that interception took place in three dimensions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plane-mounted LiDAR collected huge amounts of data, which was downloaded upon landing and analysed by the researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It revealed that the site spanned about 20 km and reached its peak between the 15th and 19th centuries. The city also contained three times as many structures as the initial study revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its height, the city contained about 800 to 900 stone-walled compounds, each housing several families in beehive-shaped homes. The local noble families lived in compounds near the city centre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadr called it “the largest of the pre-colonial Tswana capitals that we know so far.” He estimated that between 5,000 and 10,000 people lived in Kweneng during the city’s peak in 1820.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Photos of Karim Sadr<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Karim Sadr. Photo by Jeffrey Barbee. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Photo by Jeffrey Barbee.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Kweneng, the lost Tswana capital <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Aerial view of the Kweneng site after LiDAR runs. Square areas indicate LiDAR scan locations. Circles indicate location of buildings. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
LiDAR used to “redraw” the remains of the city, along the lower western slopes of the Suikerbosrand hills.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The area where Kweneng is located. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Wits researchers at the remains of the city. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Prof. Karim Sadr used plane mounted lasers to scan the Suikerbosrand hills and revealed the full extent of a once-lost Tswana capital city: Kweneng.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":644593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750],"tags":[104940,104941,104939,33014,104937,104938,30514],"class_list":["post-644586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-anthropology","tag-karim-sadr","tag-kweneng","tag-lidar","tag-light-detection-and-ranging","tag-tswana","tag-university-of-the-witwatersrand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644586"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644779,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644586\/revisions\/644779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}