We have entire cities discovered beneath the forest that no one knew...

June 12, 2016 3:41 PM

Revealed: Cambodia's Vast Medieval Cities Hidden Beneath the Jungle [The Guardian] Archaeologists in Cambodia have found multiple, previously undocumented medieval cities not far from the ancient temple city of Angkor Wat, the Guardian can reveal, in groundbreaking discoveries that promise to upend key assumptions about south-east Asia’s history. The Australian archaeologist Dr Damian Evans, whose findings will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Monday, will announce that cutting-edge airborne laser scanning technology has revealed multiple cities between 900 and 1,400 years old beneath the tropical forest floor, some of which rival the size of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.
posted by Fizz (16 comments total)

Thank you, I've been waiting for someone to post this. From the pictures it doesn't look like there's much in the way of buildings left but even if they could just mark the various streets and blocks it could give visitors a sense of the scale of what was once there.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:57 PM on June 12, 2016

I rmember National Geographic photos of the temples around Angkor as a boy firing my imagination. There was such a sense of hidden mystery in those enormous stone faces half covered by jungle. Thanks for posting!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 4:58 PM on June 12, 2016

Also see this Smithsonian article.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:36 PM on June 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's interesting that it coincides with the height of the Mayan civilization. (And they both crashed in the Little Ice Age.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:18 PM on June 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Nice. Thanks for posting this.
Older post related to discovery.
posted by clavdivs at 6:31 PM on June 12, 2016

Wow, what is interesting about the image of Preah Khan is a 1937 fly over by Goloubew and Commandant Terrasson. They found the 4 km moat surrounding the central complex or "ruins of an ancient city" Preah Khan was a masterpiece of architecture sporting the first real galleries, arched roof and internal wooden supports. Does anyone know if the road found is the "avenue of Victory"?
posted by clavdivs at 6:57 PM on June 12, 2016

It's interesting that it coincides with the height of the Mayan civilization.
Both Angkor and - say - Tikal, are places where it is easy to be struck by the strong similarity between the people depicted in the sculptures and those wandering around today. In both cases it seems like the cities went into ruin while the people lived on.

Its a few years since I was in the area but I remember very strong warnings in Cambodia against wandering even a short distance off a road - too many unexploded mines. So a helicopter would be one of the only means of being able to safely look into unexplored areas.
posted by rongorongo at 12:06 AM on June 13, 2016

From the pictures it doesn't look like there's much in the way of buildings left

If the lidar is giving such clear outlines I guarantee there are substantial walls and foundations to be uncovered. Jungle covers and buries, look how hidden Angkor was when they first dug it out.
posted by Meatbomb at 3:12 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Does anyone know if the road found is the "avenue of Victory"
Doesn't the Avenue of Victory run pretty much due East from the Terrace of Elephants to the Eastern entrance to Angkor Thom at the Victory Gate? That wouldn't even be a mile. This road is shown on the Guardian's map as running East all the way to Kompong Svay, but it's a good sixty miles.

From what I can figure out, the road the new lidar data shows connects Beng Mealea to Preah Kahn of Kompong Svay. You can read a bit about it here.

What I think you're asking is whether the already re-discovered part of this "East Road" is an extension of the Avenue of Victory. That section (from Angkor Thom towards Beng Mealea) would've shown up in the 2012 lidar data. It appears in the Guardian article on the second map marked in yellow as "East road / canal" above (which is South of) Mahendraparvata and Phnom Kulen. If you look back (i.e. right or West) to Angkor Wat, you'll see where the yellow lines are narrower but filled in. I think that's where the "canal" part of the road / canal becomes important, as that looks to me to be the East end of where the East Baray would've been (it's rice paddies now). That means it's very unlikely to be a literal continuation of the Avenue of Victory. Of course, it's also quite possible that the avenue led through the Victory Gate right up to the East Baray and thence to a giant golden royal barge where the King boarded for the next part of the trip out to Kompong Svay on the Avenue of Victory.

One thing is sure though, it's all very exciting stuff. I can't wait to see what conclusions the experts draw from this.
posted by GeckoDundee at 4:51 AM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

Preah Khan in Kompong Svay, aka Prasat Bakan, is not the same Preah Khan that is regularly visited by tourists from Siem Reap. It is awesome. And dangerous. The Khmer Rouge totally wrecked the place, and the mines have never been cleared from many parts of the complex. If you ever go there, finish (don't start) with the Elephant Temple (Preah Damrei) because the rest of the place is a ruin. A magnificent one, but a ruin. The dapper elephants wearing their saffron neckties make a refreshing highlight to an otherwise depressing visit.
posted by Autumn Leaf at 4:54 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

Have a look at this map.

If you look at the lettering for Ankor Thom and East Baray, you can see the roads East just above and below the "R" of "Ankor" as brown lines. The top road is the Avenue of Victory, and the bottom one is the road that runs East of Bayon out to the Gate of the Dead.
posted by GeckoDundee at 5:09 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Look east a hundred kilometres or so. The article isn't talking about the temple just north of Angkor Thom.
posted by Autumn Leaf at 5:45 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

If the lidar is giving such clear outlines I guarantee there are substantial walls and foundations to be uncovered. Jungle covers and buries, look how hidden Angkor was when they first dug it out.

That is even better. I wonder how long it will take for a substantial amount of these newly discovered areas to be uncovered and what condition they'll be in.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:38 AM on June 13, 2016

It's interesting that it coincides with the height of the Mayan civilization.

Most Mesoamericanists would put the height of the Maya, if they had to, in the Classic, not the Postclassic. I would be wary of drawing any conclusions as to rise/fall narratives loosely matched over the course of a few centuries, even with a possible naturalistic connection. Perhaps even because of such a connection, which would obscure any internal factors. There's a generally a trend among Western peoples to mythologize and fantasize "lost cities in the jungle," in a way that dehumanizes the actual people who built those cities and to whom those sites were never "lost."

There is one undeniable connection between the Maya and the Khmer though, at that's Michael D. Coe, whom the article describes as "emeritus professor of anthropology at Yale University and one of the world’s pre-eminent archaeologists, specialises in Angkor and the Khmer civilisation."

Coe is an absolute giant in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology, so it's a bit amusing that the Guardian glosses right over that to focus on his work on the Khmer, which is better classified as "how he's been keeping busy during retirement."
posted by Panjandrum at 1:19 PM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

Look east a hundred kilometres or so.

"A good sixty miles" as I put it. Sorry, I didn't realise your first comment was replying to me, but took it as a general clarification of a point that the Guardian should have made. I take it Clavdivs is asking whether the "East road" that has been re-discovered is the same road as the Avenue of Victory. Or in other words, whether the avenue runs all the way from the Terrace of the Elephants at Angkor Thom to Preah Kahn of Kompong Svay. Obviously the "new" road runs all the way from Angkor to Preah Kahn of Kompong Svay, but for reasons given above I doubt it's the Avenue of Victory.
posted by GeckoDundee at 1:52 PM on June 13, 2016

Well, looking at the basic design of Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, the "highway" described by Briggs "ran eastward across the river toward the Mebon and the East Baray. (When the present walls were built, in the reign of Jayavarman VII, this road came to be called the avenue of victory")
So the highway which existed before Jayavarman VII built the present walls led to Angkor Thom and became known as the avenue of victory.
posted by clavdivs at 10:21 PM on June 13, 2016