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Nano Banana Pro does a plausible job of turning a real photo of an archaeological site into what the photo might have looked like if you’d taken it from the same vantage point thousands of years ago. You can imagine an app running on your future phone that lets you turn your selfies at historical sites into realtime, full-blown reconstructions (complete with changing your clothes to be historically appropriate).

Here’s a reconstructed view of Ephesus (adapted from this photo by Jordan Klein). I prompted it to add the harbor in the distance, which no longer exists in the modern photo.

Here’s one of Corinth (adapted from this photo by Zde):

Finally, more fancifully (since there are fewer exposed ruins to work with), here’s one of Gath (adapted from this photo by Ori~):

Google this week launched Nano Banana Pro, their latest text-to-image model. It far outshines other image generators when it comes to historical recreations. For example, here’s a reconstruction of ancient Jerusalem, circa AD 70:

I gave it this photo of the Holyland Model in Jerusalem and told it to situate in its historical, geographical context. Some of the topography isn’t quite right, but it’s pulling much of that incorrect topography from the original model. It can also make a lovely sketched version.

It also does Beersheba. Here I gave it a city plan and asked it to create a drone view. The result is very close to the plan; my favorite part is the gate structure and well.

It was somewhat less-successful with Capernaum (below). I gave it a city plan and this photo of the existing ruins. It’s kind of close, though it doesn’t exactly match the plan. It’s almost a form of archaeological impressionism, where the image gives off the right vibes but isn’t precisely accurate. Also try a 3D reconstruction of this image using Marble from World Labs.

Finally, I had it create assets that it could reuse for other cities for a consistent look:

I then had it create a couple typical hilltop shepherding settlements using the assets it created (again using “drone view” in the prompt):