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Cambodia finds its 1st ancient ironworks site in history
Posted: 05 Sep 2009 09:48 AM PDT
PHNOM PENH, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Apsara Authority of Cambodia has found and excavated for the first time in its history the ancient ironworks site at Khav village, Khav commune, Chi-kreng district of Siem Reap province where is the home of Angkor Wat temple, the local media reported on Saturday."We have excavated four sites and each site has size of five meters in length and two meters in width, and we also found iron mines, some potteries, pieces of cook, some bamboos, other ancient materials, and a tube for blowing the air into the ancient cook to melt the iron stone," the khmer language newspaper Rasmei Kampuchea quoted Ea Darith, deputy director of temple conservation for external affairs of Angkor wat park as saying, who is also expert for leading the excavation group."Those sites were used for melting iron mines and it was belonged to aborigine "Kouy" and their relatives still exist in living in Cambodia now," he said. "They melted those iron mines to produce as guns, swords, javelins, and other daily households including axes, knifes, and chisels for the king at that time," he added. "According to the analysis on potteries, those sites were constructed in the 11th or 13th century," Ea Darith said.At the same time, Apsara Authority also found the ancient Chinese ointment containers which Khmer imported from China. "Khmer and Chinese people got married and lived at Angkor Wat region at that time. So we could find them," he said, adding that those ancient Chinese ointment containers were made in 12th or 13th century."Our excavation of the sites was stopped temporarily because our experts need to take those materials for laboratory and took photos to print on books for keeping for next generation to research. There are five sites of iron works here and we will excavate one more in the future at the area," according to Ea Darith.
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Tourists wait to take picture of sunrise in front of the famed Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap province in northwestern Cambodia.

Angkor Wat temple at dawn

Of the lost and the rediscovered [-Henri Mouhot,

Dying Young: Malaria killed Mouhot in the Lao wilderness.
Henri Mouhot became famous for discovering Cambodia's 'lost' Angkor, but he travelled widely. That's why his bones are in LaosHenri Mouhot, the Frenchman whose 19th-century rediscovery of Cambodia's Angkor temple complex sparked a romantic "See Angkor and die" fad in the West, saw Angkor and died - in Laos.His grave just outside Luang Prabang was all but forgotten until 1990 when tourists stumbled on it. Today any local tour guide can arrange a visit.Alexandre Henri Mouhot's collection of delightful sketches, "Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China, Cambodia and Laos During the Years 1858, 1859 and 1860", was published in London following his death in 1861, and his description of Angkor's "exotic abandoned ruins" caused considerable excitement.Missionaries and traders had been writing about the mediaeval Khmer temples since the 16th century, but Mouhot's evocation truly caught the public imagination.The catchphrase "See Angkor and die" - presumably happily - that swept the West became the title of a romantic film that Norodom Sihanouk directed in 1993 while he was still Cambodia's king.Born in 1826 in Montbeliard, France, Mouhot was gifted in languages and the natural sciences. His interests were almost certainly piqued by the 1850s books "The Kingdom and People of Siam" by Britain's Sir James Bowring and "Description of the Siam Kingdom" by French Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix.Mouhot mounted an expedition to Southeast Asia with the support of London's Royal Geographical and Zoological societies, and arrived in Bangkok on April 27, 1858.Over the next three years he made four excursions, two of them within Siam. The second took him into Cambodia to Angkor, the fourth to Luang Prabang in Laos.He mapped the territory en route, although, as mentioned in his journals, his equipment broke before he finished his map of Siam. In part because of this, France and Britain concluded that Siam extended only as far as the Chao Phya River basin, which appeared to give it the perfect dimensions for "buffer state" between their own neighbouring colonies.In 1861 Mouhot spent three months crossing dense jungle from Loei to Luang Prabang and planned to follow the Mekong River's current into Cambodia, but on October 19, outside Luang Prabang, he was suddenly struck by malarial fever. His last diary entry was dated October 29, and he died on November 10, age 35.Mouhot's servants buried the explorer on a bank of Khan River at the spot where he died. All of his journals and specimens were sent to his family in England. It was his brother who published the diaries.Commander Doudart de Lagree, leader of the French government's Mekong Exploration Commission of 1866-1868, ordered a modest monument erected on a slope with a sandstone panel that read "H Mouhot, May 1867" to commemorate the first Frenchman to visit this part of Laos.The monument was destroyed when the Khan River flooded and was replaced in 1887 by a more durable structure.Restoration work was done on the tomb in 1951 by the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient, but after that the site was abandoned to the encroaching jungle.Only in 1990 did tourists accidentally rediscover it, and the town of Mouhot's birth, Montbeliard, arranged for the grave's restoration.History regards Henri Mouhot with mixed emotions. He was a scientist, a bold explorer and a cartographer who, in a sense, gave Angkor back to the world.And yet those same maps he made paved the way for France's expanding colonial empire in Indochina, a foreign presence that remained in control until 1954.

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