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For almost as long as we've had civilization, we've lost it. There are records going back hundreds of years of explorers discovering huge temples encrusted with jungle, or giant pits full of treasure that were once grand palaces. Why did people abandon these once-thriving cities, agricultural centers, and trade routes? Often, the answer is unknown. Here are ten great civilizations whose demise remains a mystery. 1. The Maya The Maya are perhaps the classic example of a civilization that was completely lost, its great monuments, cities and roads swallowed up by the central American jungles, and its peoples scattered to...

The ancient Cambodian capital of Angkor Wat, had a staggering 900,000 inhabitants before it was abandoned in 1431, according to a new study. An international team, led by the University of British Columbia, examined three decades of data to create a demographic model of the Medieval city. Their model revealed that the capital of the long-gone Khmer Empire housed between 700,000 and 900,000 people during its zenith in the 13th century.

New University of Sydney research has revealed the ancient Cambodian city of Angkor underwent a gradual decline in occupation rather than an abrupt collapse. Researchers have long debated the causes of Angkor's demise in the 15th century. Historical explanations have emphasi[z]ed the role of aggressive neighbouring states, and the abandonment of Angkor in 1431 A.D. has been portrayed as a catastrophic demographic collapse. However, new scientific evidence shows that the intensity of land use within the economic and administrative centre of the city declined gradually more than 100 years before the supposed collapse, implying a very different end to the...

Skulls and other human bones poke from large ceramic jars at Khnorng Sroal, one of the newly dated mountainside burials in southwestern Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains. The bones were placed in the 20-inch-tall (50-centimeter-tall) body jars only after the bodies had decomposed or had been picked clean by scavenging animals, according to the study, which is published in the latest issue of the journal Radiocarbon. "The Cardamom highlanders may have used some form of exposure of the body to de-flesh the bones, like the 'sky burials' known in other cultures," study leader Beavan said. Placing the sky-high burials couldn't have been...

Japan team finds ancient Cambodian water siteTuesday, Jan. 22, 2008 SNAY VILLAGE, Cambodia (Kyodo) Japanese archaeologists said Monday they have found a man-made water channel in northwest Cambodia used for rituals as far back as the first century. The archaeologists said they discovered sacred mounds or altars at the ruins in Snay village in Banteay Meanchey Province under a two-year project that began last January. "Before, it was said that Khmer civilization started from the seventh to ninth century AD, but based on our research here, Khmer civilization went back to the first century AD," said Yoshinori Yasuda, a professor...

Archaeologists in Cambodia have found multiple, previously undocumented medieval cities not far from the ancient temple city of Angkor Wat, the Guardian can reveal, in groundbreaking discoveries that promise to upend key assumptions about south-east Asia’s history. The Australian archaeologist Dr Damian Evans, whose findings will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Monday, will announce that cutting-edge airborne laser scanning technology has revealed multiple cities between 900 and 1,400 years old beneath the tropical forest floor, some of which rival the size of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

Jean-Baptiste Chevance senses that we’re closing in on our target. Paused in a jungle clearing in northwestern Cambodia, the French archaeologist studies his GPS and mops the sweat from his forehead with a bandanna. The temperature is pushing 95, and the equatorial sun beats down through the forest canopy. For two hours, Chevance, known to everyone as JB, has been leading me, along with a two-man Cambodian research team, on a grueling trek. We’ve ripped our arms and faces on six-foot shrubs studded with thorns, been savaged by red biting ants, and stumbled over vines that stretch at ankle height...

The massive structure - almost a mile long - contains a spiral design, with several rectangular spirals that form a giant structure, archaeologists say. "This structure, which has dimensions of more than 1,500 m × 600 m (about 1 mile by 1,970 feet) is the most striking discovery associated with Angkor Wat to date. Its function remains unknown and, as yet, it has no known equivalent in the Angkorian world," Roland Fletcher, a University of Sydney professor, said in a statement put out by the university. Today, the spiral structure is hard to make out on the ground, having been...

Of all the numerals, "0" -- alone in green on the roulette wheel -- is most significant. Unique in representing absolute nothingness, its role as a placeholder gives our number system its power. It enables the numerals to cycle, acquiring different meanings in different locations (compare 3,000,000 and 30). With the exception of the Mayan system, whose zero glyph never left the Americas, ours is the only one known to have a numeral for zero. Babylonians had a mark for nothingness, say some accounts, but treated it primarily as punctuation. Romans and Egyptians had no such numeral either... Found on...

Long-lost paintings have been discovered on the walls of Cambodia's ancient Angkor Wat temple, thanks to the keen observations of an Australian National University (ANU) researcher. The ancient paintings date back almost 500 years and depict deities, animals, boats and the temple itself, giving historians a new understanding of life in a relatively unknown period of Cambodia's history. Rock art researcher Noel Hidalgo Tan discovered the hidden images while working as a volunteer at an archaeological excavation in Angkor Wat during a university break in 2010... It was only when Tan enhanced the images on his computer that the paintings...

SYDNEY, Australia — Airborne laser technology has uncovered a network of roadways and canals, illustrating a bustling ancient city linking Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat temple complex. The discovery was announced late Monday in a peer-reviewed paper released early by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The laser scanning revealed a previously undocumented formally planned urban landscape integrating the 1,200-year-old temples. The Angkor temple complex, Cambodia’s top tourist destination and one of Asia’s most famous landmarks, was constructed in the 12th century during the mighty Khmer empire. Angkor Wat is a point of deep pride for Cambodians, appearing...

Mary Beth Day, University of Cambridge Bayon temple, constructed by Angkorian King Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century. The faces may be representations of Buddha, the bodhisattva Lokesvara, Jayavarman VII, or a combination. The ancient city of Angkor — the most famous monument of which is the breathtaking ruined temple of Angkor Wat — might have collapsed due to valiant but ultimately failed efforts to battle drought, scientists find. The great city of Angkor in Cambodia, first established in the ninth century, was the capital of the Khmer Empire, the major player in southeast Asia for nearly five centuries....

Sprawling Angkor Brought Down By Overpopulation, Study Suggests Susan Brown for National Geographic News August 13, 2007 Cambodia's long-lost temple complex of Angkor is the world's largest known preindustrial settlement, reveals a new radar study that found 74 new temples and more than a thousand manmade ponds at the site. But urban sprawl and its associated environmental devastation may have led to the collapse of the kingdom, which includes the renowned temple of Angkor Wat, the study suggests. Ever since the late 16th century, when Portuguese traders spied the towers of the monument poking through a dense canopy of trees,...

Australian archaeologists using complex radar and satellite technology to map the medieval city of Angkor have discovered more than 70 new temples scattered across a vast area of farmland and forests in north-west Cambodia. University of Sydney archaeologist Damian Evans said, "It's huge. We've mapped a massive settlement stretching well beyond the main temples of the World Heritage tourist area in Siem Reap. "We've found the city was roughly five times bigger than previously thought." The newly discovered ruins of the ancient Khmer empire metropolis sprawl across 1000sqkm "about 20km in every direction" outside the United Nations listed World Heritage...

In the year 802 C.E., the founder of the medieval Khmer empire, Jayavarman II, anointed himself "king of the world." In laying claim to such a grandiose title, he was a little ahead of his time: It would be another few centuries before the Khmers built Earth's largest religious monument, Angkor Wat, the crowning glory of a kingdom that stood in what is today northwestern Cambodia. But Jayavarman II had good reason to believe that his nascent kingdom, in the sacred Kulen hills northeast of Angkor, was a record-holder. Airborne laser scanning technology, or LiDAR, has revealed the imprint of...

Although former President Bill Clinton has held more than 100 election events, his wife is unable to campaign because of her foreign policy role. She is currently on a two-week tour of Asia and Australasia that includes stops in Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia. In Siem Reap in Cambodia yesterday, Mrs Clinton met a group of about 50 victims of human trafficking at an American-funded facility and promised continued American support. Related Articles Palin hits back at Karl Rove's claim she lacks 'gravitas' Barack Obama's world turns upside down Obama's victory in pictures Prepare...

Starting in 1975, Pol Pot and his Communist revolutionaries killed almost 2,000,000 Cambodians, out of a total population of 5,000,000. Why?? Pol Pot lived in Paris for many years where he became a Marxist intellectual. Sitting in classrooms and cafes, he visualized the perfect Cambodia. He went back to Cambodia to eliminate foreign influences, purge educated people, and thereby create an agrarian workers paradise. Pol Pot was a fanatic, a true believer. The best one-word summary is to say that Pol Pot was an ideologue. He had ideas in his head; he knew they were right; and he was thereby...

When they heard that I was going to Cambodia, my friends and family first worried about my safety, and then reminded me to take lots of pictures of Angkor Wat. They told me that whenever they read something about the country, the reports were more often than not about bombings and crime. But after my recent five-day holiday, I discovered that the country, which has been ravaged for years by civil war, is peaceful. Incidentally, the hostage drama in an international school in Siem Reap happened after I came back, but I know that it was just a one-off unfortunate...

PETALING JAYA: A 1,000-year-old lost city, possibly older than Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Borobudur in Indonesia, is believed to have been located in the dense jungles of Johor. The discovery of what is thought to be the site of Kota Gelanggi or Perbendaharaan Permata (Treasury of Jewels) by an independent Malaysian researcher has prompted museum officials to plan an expedition to confirm the finding. If indeed the site is that of the lost city , it is set to transform the historical landscape of the region, said Raimy Che-Ross, who spent 12 years researching Malay manuscripts all over the...

Cambodian fury at Pol Pot 'theme park' By Jan McGirk in Bangkok 06 September 2003 A Cambodian plan to build a theme park in the jungles where Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge killed nearly two million people has outraged relatives of the victims of his Killing Fields. Relatives are furious that the government's plan includes building a replica of the house where the former dictator died in bed at the age of 73. Some of his former cronies, including his cook and housekeeper, are to act as tour guides to show visitors around 26 proposed Khmer Rouge historical sites, which will...