Lara Dunston “Revealed: Cambodia's vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/11/lost-city-medieval-discovered-hidden-beneath-cambodian-jungle
カンボディアのアンコール・ワットは巨大な都市の一部であったということで、濠太剌利のDamian Evans博士*1を初めとする国際的な考古学ティームがアンコール・ワット周辺の調査を進めていることはかなり前から報じられていた*2。研究は大詰めを迎えたということだろうか。この度明らかにされたのは、アンコール･ワット周辺の密林の中に、西暦900〜1400年に亙る複数の都市遺構が確認されたこと、その総面積は現在のカンボディアの首都たるプノン・ペンに匹敵するということ。
That survey uncovered an array of discoveries, including elaborate water systems that were built hundreds of years before historians believed the technology existed. 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.“Our coverage of the post-Angkorian capitals also provides some fascinating new insights on the ‘collapse’ of Angkor,” Evans said. “There’s an idea that somehow the Thais invaded and everyone fled down south – that didn’t happen, there are no cities [revealed by the aerial survey] that they fled to. It calls into question the whole notion of an Angkorian collapse.”
考古学界の反応；
The new cities were found by firing lasers to the ground from a helicopter to produce extremely detailed imagery of the Earth’s surface. Evans said the airborne laser scanners had also identified large numbers of mysterious geometric patterns formed from earthen embankments, which could have been gardens.
Michael Coe*3, emeritus professor of anthropology at Yale University and one of the world’s pre-eminent archaeologists, specialises in Angkor and the Khmer civilisation.“I think that these airborne laser discoveries mark the greatest advance in the past 50 or even 100 years of our knowledge of Angkorian civilisation,” he said from Long Island in the US.
“I saw Angkor for the first time in 1954, when I wondered at the magnificent temples, but there was nothing to tell us who had lived in the city, where they had lived, and how such an amazing culture was supported. To a visitor, Angkor was nothing but temples and rice paddies.”
David Chandler*4, emeritus professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, the foremost expert on Cambodian history and the author of several books and articles on the subject, said the work was thrilling and credited Evans and his colleagues with “rewriting history”.Chandler said he believed it would open up a series of perspectives that would help people know more about Angkorian civilisation, and how it flourished and eventually collapsed.
“It will take time for their game-changing findings to drift into guide books, tour guides, and published histories,” Chandler said. “But their success at putting hundreds of nameless, ordinary, Khmer-speaking people back into Cambodia’s past is a giant step for anyone trying to deal with Cambodian history.”
*1:https://twitter.com/archaeoangkor
*2:See http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20070816/1187241208 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20130618/1371580262 また、シドニー大学Angkor Research Programのサイト http://sydney.edu.au/angkor/
*3:See eg. http://anthropology.yale.edu/people/michael-coe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Coe
*4:See eg. http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/history-studies/david-chandler/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_P._Chandler
