An ancient settlement, known has the ‘lost city’ of Cambodia, has been rediscovered by scientists using aerial mapping after remaining hidden in dense jungle for centuries.

Mahendraparvata, believed to have been the first capital of the Khmer Empire, a powerful Southeast Asian state that existed during the Angkor period from the 9th to 15th centuries, had long-eluded archeologists, who knew of its existence but were unable to map it out because of the difficult terrain.

Studies of the city were further hampered by landmines leftover from the Khmer Rouge, who used the location in the Phnom Kulen highlands as a last stronghold when their regime came to an end in 1979 in the Cambodian-Vietnamese War.

In a new paper, published this month in the academic journal, Antiquity, an international team has revealed what they say is a definitive reconstruction of the form of the early Angkor-period capital, with the help of airborne laser scanning, a technique known as Lidar.

“Despite its importance as the location of one of the Angkor period's earliest capitals, the mountainous region of Phnom Kulen has, to date, received strikingly little attention,” point out the report’s authors, led by Jean-Baptiste Chevance from the Archaeology and Development Foundation in the UK.