At the mention of Cambodia, the majority pops up the name of the Angkor Wat temple complex. In fact, there are several cultural monuments of the past in this area: Angkor Thom, Bayon, Ta Prohm, Phnom Bakheng, etc. Angkor Wat is the most famous temple complex visited by tourists. But few people pay attention to no less mysterious and even more fantastic structures, or rather, hydraulic structures: reservoirs with the local name of barai.
At one time I posted an article about them in the livejournal. But since then, no one has raised this topic. Recently sent a link to the video:
The author also asked questions about the possibility of the ancients to dig such a reservoir. Even within the time frame of the history of this region - the figure turns out to be unreal, it takes more than 1000 years of manual labor.
I propose to look again at these places in space images and from a height and return to the version that I offered in my time in the livejournal.
Coordinates: 13 ° 26'04.8 & quot; N 103 ° 48'28.0 & quot; E
Historians do not like to talk about huge artificial reservoirs next to a group of temples, much less discuss them. This is not surprising. Because discussions raise a lot of questions.
View from above. This is perhaps the largest artificial reservoir of ancient civilizations. Longitudinal orientation: present-day west-east.
Promotional video:
View of the western bar from a height, covering the entire reservoir. Huge scale.
Despite the huge size of the bar, its geometry and alignment to the cardinal points are well maintained. The work was clearly directed by ancient surveyors.
There are channels from the bar. But they are not like irrigation ones. They are like transport links that connect the ponds of the temple to the bar. Now this channel is silted up, but it can be seen in space images.
The scheme of water canals is only part of this territory.
Angkor Wat. The width of the canals is about 200m. Length - 1.5 km
News sometimes appears on the Internet that another ancient temple has been found in the jungle of Cambodia. The jungle has a small area there. Everything else is fields. The area outside Angkor is densely populated. And it is not difficult to search in a limited area in the jungle, unlike, for example, Ecuador or Brazil. Perhaps everything has been known for a long time and this is done to attract the attention of tourists.
Eastern bar. Much smaller than the western one. Dimensions: 3500m x 850m. In the jungle, I found a body of water in the form of a human image. Size: about 450x450m
And to the south of it, apparently, there is another, but silted bari:
Dimensions 7x1.7 km.
West of Angkor there is also a number of temple complexes, previously surrounded by water ditches, canals
If you think about all this large-scale construction, then questions arise:
Let's try to answer these questions.
The first thing that comes to mind is reservoirs for collecting rainwater and subsequent irrigation of fields through canals. It is quite logical. In addition, during the rainy season, this area can be flooded and turn into one continuous body of water. Otherwise, the water could drain into the barn. But the second question is much more difficult to answer: where did the millions of cubic meters of soil go? There are no large hills in the area.
My version: these reservoirs are quarries for the extraction of building material, laterite:
Extraction of laterite in India. Statue of an elephant made of plastered laterite.
It is a clay-like rock with admixtures of sand.
Laterite masonry in Angkor. Sandstone is also used here. By the way, where did they get it? There are no mountains or rocky outcrops in Angkor area. Delivered? Hundreds of kilometers? Or maybe they made artificial sandstone?
Laterite, most likely, turns to stone in the air, there is a reaction with CO2 and it turns into a solid stone such as we see in the structures of Cambodian temples.
Extraction of laterite in China. Most likely, this is exactly how the laterite mining and the gradual excavation of these quarries - barai - took place. The blocks were used for construction. And not only temples. But then the next question is: where are all these buildings? Maybe they are now underground? And the bars were not silted up and had a great depth? Quite possible. And the temples survived due to the fact that they were surrounded by a water barrier, slowing down the flow of water and silt.
Most likely we have the same situation here as in other parts of the Earth. There was a developed culture and civilization here. But there was a cataclysm. The surviving groups of people who came later to these places could no longer say who built it all.
Author: Sibved