Lost medieval city found in Cambodia using revolutionary scanning technology and Indiana Jones-style jungle expedition



Archaeologists used Lidar technology that combines narrow lasers with radars to scan the ancient city

It was attached to a helicopter that spent a week flying over the site north of Angkor Wat collecting the data



A group of daring archaeologists uncovered a lost 1,200-year-old city on a misty Cambodian mountain by hacking through the thick jungle, strewn with live land mines.

Yet they were also aided in their quest by some incredible technology that revealed the ancient city to them in the first place, and guided by a local - a one-legged former Khmer Rouge soldier.

Mahendraparvata, the city they found, is thought to pre-date the famous site of Angkor Wat by around 350 years and lies only 25 miles west of that huge temple.



Archaeologists believe Mahendraparvata was the first city of the Angkor Empire in 802 AD.

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Damian Evans, director of the University of Sydney's archaeological research center in Cambodia, was amazed by what his team found

Technology: The airborne Lidar system revealed a long-forgotten urban landscape

In 2012, the team discovered 1,200-year-old statues and temples. This research now builds upon those findings

WHAT IS LIDAR?

Lidar is a remote sensing technology that measures distance by shooting a laser at a target and analysing the light that is reflected back.

The technology was developed in the early 1960s and uses laser imaging with radar technology that can calculate distances.

It was first used in meteorology to measure clouds by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The term lidar is a portmanteau of 'light and 'radar.' Lidar uses ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light to image objects and can be used with a wide range of targets, including non-metallic objects, rocks, rain, chemical compounds, aerosols, clouds and even single molecules. A narrow laser beam can be used to map physical features with very high resolution.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported the expedition exclusively, which began in earnest after the team used Lidar technology on a helicopter.



The Lidar system uses pulsing laser signals to see through the thick undergrowth, where it detected a distinct outline of the the long-forgotten city.

It uses ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light to image objects and can be used with a wide range of targets, including non-metallic objects, rocks, rain, chemical compounds, aerosols, clouds and even single molecules.

This map of northwest Cambodia gives an overview of the areas where Evans and his team used the Lidar imagery technology. The relevant areas covered are shaded yellow

Perilous: The team were guided by Heng Heap (left) a local, one-legged, former Khmer Rouge soldier through the dangerous jungle Damian Evans, director of the University of Sydney's archaeological research center in Cambodia, told the Morning Herald of his 'eureka' moment when the city appeared on his screen. 'With this instrument - bang - all of a sudden we saw an immediate picture of an entire city that no one knew existed which is just remarkable,' Evans said. So his team headed into the perilous mountain countryside of Cambodia, along goat tracks, through deep bogs and around rivers, always avoiding the live land mines placed during previous conflicts.

The new data also maps out the full extent of Mahendraparvata, information that will make future digs much more accurate and less time consuming

They were helped in this by Heng Heap, a chain-smoking former Khmer Rouge soldier who lost a leg in mine explosion. Even the local was surprised by what the archaeologists took him to.

The team discovered a whole urban landscape with canals, roads, caves and, as yet unexplained, mounds which could be tombs.



Evans added that: 'There may be implications for society today... for example, we see from the imagery that the landscape was completely devoid of vegetation.'

The archaeologist had one explanation for this: 'One theory we are looking at is that the severe environmental impact of deforestation and the dependence on water management led to the demise of the civilisation … perhaps it became too successful to the point of becoming unmanageable.'

Ancestor: The new-found city predates the famous Angkor Wat temple by 350 years

The archaeologists were astounded by what they found

Lidar imagery shows the central area of Angkor. The 'walled city' of Angkor Thom is pictured above Angkor Wat. The red lines are features such as roads and canals from the post-medieval period, while the other features are from the Angkor era

A pre-publication draft from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claimed that Mahendraparvata, as well as Angkor Wat, would have been part of a 'vast urban network.'

The paper said: ' We identify an entire, previously undocumented, formally planned urban landscape into which the major temples such as Angkor Wat were integrated.'

Beyond these newly identified urban landscapes, the Lidar data reveal anthropogenic changes to the landscape on a vast scale, and lend further weight to an emerging consensus that infrastructural complexity, unsustainable modes of subsistence and climate variation were crucial factors in the decline of the classical Khmer civilization.'

According to NBC News , the researchers claim the new map shows a pattern of 'city blocks'.

Mounds and ponds would have been built within these blocks to create temple precincts.



They type of 'cityscapes' were seen in ancient Angkor as well as the Phnom Kulen region and another area farther northeast, known as Koh Ker.

The researchers added: 'These 'urban temples' are not isolated; rather, they are nodes in an increasingly concentrated medieval cityscape.'

VIDEO: Finding a long-lost city in Cambodia



