Phnom Kulen

The construction of Angkor Wat itself was a project of almost incomprehensible scale.

The sandstone blocks used for the temple were quarried from Phnom Kulen, a plateau roughly 40 kilometers to the northeast.

They were transported to the building site by a combination of canal, river and overland routes, floated on rafts during the wet season, hauled on sledges or rollers during the dry season.

The total volume of stone used in the construction is estimated at between 5 and 10 million blocks, with individual blocks weighing up to several tonnes.

They're, you know, sitting around a table with a cover over the top and a teapot, stood alongside 20 armed Khmer Rouge soldiers in their black uniforms, with the prince and Monique not matching their uniforms exactly, but smiling with, you know, out of the 20 soldiers, maybe only three or four smiling with them.

And eventually they reached the destination, Phnom Kulen, the long, flat-topped mountain range a couple of hours northeast of Angkor, about 15 days after they began their trip from Vietnam.

There, a photo on page 18 of the magazine captioned, A historic event.

The head of state presides over the first meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia, GRUNK, in the liberated zone.

And it just looks a little bit spooky.

It kind of caught me off guard.

Next, they're pictured in front of the giant reclining Buddha that's on Phnom Kulen.

Now, if you've been up there, it's likely you've stood in this same area.

... 'cause they don't wanna do it.

Uh, but in order to get ahold of these upper castes, what Jayavarman does is he travels to Mount Mahendraparvata, which is known as, now as Phnom Kulen, and he takes a Hindu Brahmin with him, and they perform this sacred rite ceremony that makes him a devaraja.

All this guy does, and I'm not, this is not me-

[laughs]

Similar discoveries have been made in other jungle and forested environments around the world.

In Southeast Asia, LiDAR surveys revealed the full extent of the ancient Khmer city of Mahendraparvata on Phnom Kulen mountain in Cambodia, a settlement that local people knew existed in legend and fragments, but whose complete layout had been obscured by centuries of forest growth.

The scan revealed a planned city with a grid of streets and artificial ponds and evidence of intensive habitation, far larger and more formally organized than anyone had realized.

The city had been there all along, folded under the canopy, patient as anything, carrying its information through all those centuries of being mistaken for a natural hillside.