Cambodian experts have uncovered seven ancient temples in the Siem Reap area that had been lost to the encroaching forest and years of civil war in the country, an official said on Wednesday.
The most recently discovered temple, found in early September about 15km north of Angkor Wat, is a late-ninth to early-10th-century Brahman temple that is unrecorded in any known documents, the official said.
”We only just learned about it from villagers who went deep into the jungle and found this temple covered by forest,” said Nim Son, deputy chief of the Culture Ministry’s Siem Reap-Angkor Heritage Office.
”This is very important to show the world that there are so many other temples that still hide in the forest,” he said. ”We will ask authorities to protect and demine the area.”
The temple site, known by locals as Ta Lar Taly, is about 40 square meters, and its structures reach 15m high. The other six temples, which were found in late August and early September north of Siem Reap, were built around the same time and measure about 60 square metres.
Most of the temple sites suffered extensive damage to about 5% of their structures due to natural causes and looters, who ransacked most valuable artefacts from the sites, Nim Son said. — Sapa-DP