Body Jar Find
By tony leather, 23rd May 2012 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutNewsOff Beat
The unknown tribe involved left clues behind in that they used ceramic jars and log chests to bury their dead, many of these left behind at the various sites around the Cardoman mountains.
Body Jar Find
A major archaeological find has been discovered at Phnom Pel, which is one of four freshly dated burial sites marking what remains of a vanished Cambodian culture - dating from the last days of the Khmer Empire, which once controlled large Southeast Asian areas - over one hundred miles from its Cambodian base at Angkor.
The unknown tribe involved left clues behind in that they used ceramic jars and log chests to bury their dead, many of these left behind at the various sites around the Cardoman mountains.
Body Jar B
The mystery tribe at least left evidence behind of their burial rituals, placing either bodies or bones in ceramic or other containers, usually left in caves as high as 160ft in caves on a cliff to keep poachers at bay. The date of these events - thanks to radio carbon dating - was between 1400 and 1600 AD, as the Khmer empire came to an end.
Scattered throughout the various caves, the containers, be they hollowed out logs or jars containing bones and teeth, or skulls peeking out of the necks of the ceramics - perched on shelves cut into the stone near the mountain base, the higher ones inaccessible to anyone but the most determined of visitors.
Jars also show signs of having been being part of a ritual, each jar having a hole drilled into the bottom, possibly just to let fluids or water that might have leaked in drain away quickly and not cause damage to the remains.
Body Jar C
It appears that the Khmer empire impacted hardly at all on the mountainside grave-builders, people of Angkor following the Hindu and Buddhist practice of cremation, meaning that the burial containers discovered would never have featured in their rituals. This means that the newly found evidence of this unknown culture is an exciting pointer to a previously unsuspected culture, about which it is to be hoped that much more will soon be uncovered.
Comments
24th May 2012 (#)
So much we are yet to discover.. Very interesting article Tony. thanks.. Rose
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