Cambodia's vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle | Hacker News Reader

Cambodia's vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle

theguardian.com

116 pointskawera22 comments

> LIDAR: An airborne laser scanner (ALS) is mounted to a helicopter skid pad. Flying with pre-determined guidelines, including altitude, flight path and airspeed, the ALS pulses the terrain with more than 16 laser beams per square metre during flights. The time the laser pulse takes to return to the sensor determines the elevation of each individual data point.

The data downloaded from the ALS is calibrated and creates a 3D model of the information captured during the flights. In order to negate tree foliage and manmade obstacles from the data, any sudden and radical changes in ground height are mapped out, with technicians who have models of the terrain fine-tuning the thresholds in processing these data points. Once completed, the final 3D model is handed over to the archaeologists for analysis, which can take months to process into maps.

It's so interesting that technology advancements must often precede discovery and thus are part and parcel (imo) of the discovery process. The same can very much also be said for medical and biological science - e.g., MRI and associated analytic techniques.

"Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction" (McClellan, Dorn) lays out an interest overview of how technology led science throughout world history.

We naively think that science leads technology, but for much of history, it was technology that led science/understanding. The telescope led astronomy and the microscope led germ biology.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technics_and_Civilization

Angkor is a fascinating place and well worth a visit - dozens of beautiful temples, most of which were hidden by the jungle until the 19th century. Angkor Wat, the biggest one, is particularly impressive. Very good place to appreciate that empires come and go.

While it was known that Angkor was the capital of a vast empire around the 12th century, the news here is that large parts of that empire may now be rediscovered.

Amazing story. Here's a shot of me and my wife next to that moss-covered elephant on Mount Kulen from 2004.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r4ebityp95a8ppm/PICT0481.jpg?dl=0

To get there, we rode through the jungle on the backs of motorbikes driven by former Khmer Rouge soldiers. When my driver told our guide that I was squeezing him too hard, I apologized profusely, even though I was afraid I would fall off.

Incredible to think that there's a whole city underneath, although not surprising given the post-apocalyptic feel to wondering through these ruins in the jungle.

This is fascinating. I wonder if it will accelerate the pace of restoration of temples in the area. When I visited, there were many temple complexes completely overrun with vegetation -- to the point where they filmed Indiana Jones there!

>> I wonder if it will accelerate the pace of restoration of temples in the area.

Likely not; current restoration projects are a shitshow, with an utter lack of coordination and even communication between the various country teams involved. In one temple, the Indian team tried to clean a wall and stained it; the Chinese restoration crews make the plainest and cheapeast concrete fillers to plug gaps in rock faces, they flake if you touch them. And now, the authority in charge of maintaining the complex is struggling with how to balance the much-valued tourism with air pollution; UNESCO has threatened status and funding if it doesn't address the impact that mostly auto/bike exhaust is having on temple faces. Other restoration projects will only get initiated if someone else is spending the money, and also kicks back to Phnom Penh.

>> to the point where they filmed Indiana Jones there!

Alongside Indy, Lara and Tony Leung, my favorite film reference is at Beng Mealea, and bonus points for the article for mentioning that temple. It's about 45km away down a dusty rutted road, and before it was added to the ticket list, the only people who visited besides domestic tourists were Japanese, because Hayao Miyazaki took it as inspiration for the setting "Laputa: Castle in the Sky." If you ever saw the old Japanese tourism books with the blue outer edge, Beng Mealea was mentioned in that, and every non-Khmer there would be clutching it.

The beauty of the jungle is kinda the point.

Not hard to poison a tree ;)

It's on purpose.

I think the point is better understanding the history of Khmer civilization

Fascinating! This has been a month of big archaeological discoveries.

There was also a similar recent discovery [1] in India of a large urban settlement that existed around the same time as the Indus Valley Civilization

[1] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/Harappa-like...

Given the curse of the area, I'm kind of afraid by the discovery: place got partly destroyed by the Khmer Rouges, then robbed by my fellow French and is now under tight management by the Chinese. I really hope this will benefit Cambodians

I was once talking to Dougald O'Reilly, an archaeologist from Australian National University who's done a lot of research at Angkor Wat. He was talking about having just published a paper about a dig and centuries-old skulls they'd found, and a lot of technical data. He ended with a quip that it was a lot of head trauma, and, me not being a science guy at all, I thought he meant the paper was academically rigrous. No, every skull had had their heads bashed in.

>under tight management by the Chinese ?

I didn't see much Chinese influence when I was there and it's hundreds of miles from China.

The general complaint is that Cambodia is under Vietnamese influence, mostly stemming from its backing of and leading the defectors who overthrew the Khmer Rouge. People today complain that the top govt officials are still Vietnamese, whether by backing or by blood, as well as many of the richest tycoons; the primary deputy prime minister (there's plenty) Sok An is often called a slave to Vietnam, and he's in charge of the Apsara Authority, which manages the Angkor complex; Sok Kong (unrelated), is one of Cambodia's richest men and ran the conglomerate that held ticketing rights to Angkor for decades; he is ethnically part Vietnamese, and because Angkor's tourism revenue was suspected to be too low, complaints about the national landmark being sold off to Vietnam were so huge that it factored in the last general election. An age-old cultural hatred is at play here, which itself comes from old empire stuff.

Because you have to dig a bit. I have spent quite some time in the area and all main officials are in close relations with Chinese. Take the PM, Hun Sen, who is publicly linked to the Chinese (by family)+ gave all the key oil exploration contracts to Chinese corporations. Have a look into the latest International Transparency report, you'll see that there are increasing doubts about his "transparency" "It's hundreds of miles from China" => since when that proves anything?

Largest empire in the world in 1200? That seems... implausible.

The agricultural systems around the big temple complexes suggest that over a million people lived in the area.

http://ki-media.blogspot.com/2007/08/metropolis-angkor-world...

Europe was in a fairly decentralized state but still there were many chinese kingdoms quite a bit bigger.

They must mean larger within some other context...perhaps temple area covered? Angor Watt is sprawling and flat. I could def see the surface areas of these complexes being the "mostest"

Looking at Wikipedia it seems wrong. It had the Khmer Empire at 4m population 1.2m sq km, and the Song Dynasty in China at 118m population, 2+m sq km at roughly the same period.

It does say however that Angkor was the largest pre-industrial city in the world, with an urban sprawl of at least 1,000 square kilometres.

Why am I expecting a comment on HN is like "This is not a surprise at all! I have been using the shadows of the temples in the last three years to work on my startup..."...

>> The findings are expected to challenge theories on how the Khmer empire developed, dominated the region, and declined around the 15th century, and the role of climate change and water management in that process.

Wait, climate change in the 15th century? ;-)

[From Wikipedia Article of Khmer Empire] In addition, the input of Buddhist ideas conflicted and disturbed the state order built under the predominate Hinduism.[END]

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