Since the dawn of the mankind, humans have worked from dawn to dusk and rested after the sunset. But that has changed ever since the invention of the lightbulb by Thomas Edison.

Today our nights are getting brighter than ever and the reason is that we have lights everywhere. Our markets, billboards, roads, and homes are lit. Every place humans have inhabited has some sort of nightlights today.

Now thanks to the satellites, we can see and map these nightlights from the space. This data serves a variety of purposes including aiding disaster relief, analyzing power outages and even to map the estimates of global and regional emissions of carbon dioxide, etc.

Nightlights is an extremely useful dataset to be incorporated in your analysis if you want insights on external factors. The night-time value gives really rich, unique insights on population and economic development.

Images of the Earth during the night are processed to create this data and are freely available for anyone to download and process/analyze. In my last blog, I talked about how Google Earth Engine provides geospatial datasets without the need to download and pre-process it.

Using Earth Engine, I analyzed the freely available Nightlights datasets derived from Satellite images for fun and found some interesting patterns using them and thought I should share some of them.

Old Civilizations developed around rivers

Old civilizations were around rivers. The most likely reason for it could be that in those days humans depended the most on agriculture and these rivers made it possible to have it on a very large scale. As these civilizations died, new were born on their footprints.

So by looking at the pattern of the human settlement today, we can see how ancient civilizations developed. So let’s have a look at the three oldest civilizations on this planet.

Indus Valley Civilization

The Indus Valley civilization, also known as Harappan civilization, began 5,300 years ago. It flourished in areas that presently extend from Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. Indus Valley civilization is one of the three early civilizations of the Old World along the Egyptian and Mesopotamia civilizations.

This river has so much historic importance that even the name ‘India’ comes from the river ‘Indus’. Most of its basin is in Modern-day Pakistan and if you look at the Nightlights of Pakistan, you can see the presence of humans is around River Indus and its tributaries.

Nightlight in Pakistan along the river Indus

It resembles so much that you can draw the rivers on this map. Now have a look at the Indus River System to see the resemblance.

Indus River system

Ancient Egyptian Civilization

Ancient Egypt civilization took place between 3100 BC and 2686 BC. It is the most famous and admired culture in the world. The culture was developed along the banks of River Nile. The magnificent pyramids are some of the evidence of the once-booming culture along the river bank and act as a reminder of the existence of a powerful Empire in the Egyptian desert.

Modern-day Egypt is also at the same place as the Ancient Egyptian Civilization i.e. the Delta of River Nile. And the Nightlight dataset shows that the population of Egypt is concentrated around the river Nile and its Delta. Again there’s a similarity.

Nightlights in Egypt along the River Nile

To see the likeness, have a look at the map of Egypt and the river Nile.

Map of Egypt and the River Nile

Mesopotamia Civilization

Mesopotamia was the first civilization to emerge in human history. The area was set between Tigris and Euphrates rivers and lies between Asian Minor and the Persian Gulf. The region is known for its fertile agricultural land. The civilization dates back to 10,000 BC when people around the area found the concept of agriculture and began domesticating animals.

These rivers start from modern-day Turkey, move through Syria and flow into Iraq before they finally make it to the Persian Gulf. If you look at modern-day Iraq and Syria, you can see that their cities still have that pattern.

Development of Iraqi and Syrian cities around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

Now have a look at the maps of these two rivers to see the resemblance.

Map of rivers Tigris and Euphrates

New Civilizations are popping at the coasts

As trade got popular, humans changed the trend and started settling around the seaports. We have recently seen cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah, etc. popup along the Coast of UAE. We are seeing the similar new development of Chabahar in Iran and Gawadar in Pakistan along their coasts. For Example, have a look at Australia

Nightlights in Australia

Australian cities are much younger as compared to the civilizations we talked about earlier and they represent the newer pattern of Human settlements. You can see that Australia is a vast dark land except for the cities that have popped along its coasts.

Tensions on borders are visible from the space

Another human activity that is visible from the space is tension on borders. We all know that India and Pakistan don’t get along well. And it can be seen from above.

Pakistan India Border from the space

India Pakistan border zoomed in

The southern part of their border is visible because it is situated in sparsely populated deserts which makes it dark on both sides but the border is lit by floodlights as both sides monitor activity on the other side 24/7.

Another border that is visible from above for the same reasons is between North and South Koreas. And it is even more clear.

Nightlights of North and South Korea as seen from the space

Korean Border zoomed

Another thing to see here is the huge difference in development. South Korea is so much more developed as compared to the North that you can see lively cities all over South Korea while in the North, the only place with some nightlights is the city of Pyongyang.

Economic Development

Nightlights can also be seen as a gauge of economic development. The cities start getting bigger and brighter with economic development. I was using the DMSP OSP nightlights dataset for the analysis and it is available from 1992 to 2013 so I tried to see how the world changed in that time and I could see that almost the whole world got brighter.