Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2008
Japan team finds ancient Cambodian water site
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 of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto.
"Khmer civilization established a very well-organized and harmonized water system. They constructed a perfect water circulation system (up to and including) the Angkor Wat period" between the ninth and 12th centuries, Yasuda said.
He said that the discovered water channel may be the world's oldest, or some 600 years older than the Tikal ruins in Guatemala in the seventh to ninth centuries.
The site is located about 370 km northwest of Phnom Penh, or about 70 km west of Siem Reap Province, which is home to Angkor Wat.
Yasuda said the project is supported by the Tokyo Foundation, a unit of the semipublic Nippon Foundation, and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, in close cooperation with Cambodia.
With 10 Japanese archaeologists and experts and 50 Cambodian staff, the team excavated five sites last year, discovering 36 tombs, seven pits and 156 pottery pieces.
This year, another 12 tombs were discovered, according to Yoshito Miyatsuka, archaeologist and president of the Miyatsuka Institute of Archaeology in Sapporo, who helped conduct field research on the site.
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