That is the image of a lost city, found beneath the Cambodian jungle. Mahendraparvata, sometimes dubbed the ‘lost city of Cambodia’, was an early capital city of the Khmer Empire (800s - 1400s CE). Historians and archaeologists knew Mahendraparvata existed – somewhere. And a recently-released paper suggests that it has been found, based on the combination of scriptural evidence stating the capital was on a specific mountainous plateau, and airborne laser scanning (above) that found the remains of a city in that area.
Traditional ground-based archaeological work was conducted after the laser scanning identified the site. The city appears to date to the late 700s CE to early 800s CE, the right era for Mahendraparvata. It is a city of linear axes denoting wide boulevards. The streets are large, 60 to 80 meters (~200 feet) wide, and up to 15 kilometers (9 miles) long. Dams, reservoir walls and the enclosure walls of temples, neighborhoods and even the royal palace are built next to or alongside the embankments.
With thousands of buildings Mahendraparvata will take decades to fully rediscover. This was a large city, a capital city, built to impress even centuries later.
