Archaeologists using radar imagery have shown that an ancient Cambodian settlement centered on the celebrated temple of Angkor Wat was far more extensive than previously thought, a study released Monday said.
The medieval settlement surrounding Angkor, the one-time capital of the illustrious Khmer empire which flourished between the ninth and 14th centuries, covered a 3,000 square kilometer area.
The urban complex was at least three times larger than archaeologists had previously suspected and easily the largest preindustrial urban area of its kind, eclipsing comparable developments such as Tikal a Classic Maya "city" on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.Archaeologists have been trying to map the boundaries of the sprawling agricultural environs of Angkor in Siem Reap province since the 1950s, but the ancient remains have been subsumed by modern residential and agricultural developments, complicating the task.
So in 2000, a group of archaeologists from Australia, France and Cambodia who were working on the project turned to the US space agency NASA for help.
The agency obliged, providing radar images of the terrain that distinguished the contours of the landscape under the surface of the earth, identifying the location of roads, canals and ponds surrounding temples.
When the researchers combined the data with aerial photography and ground surveys, they were able to identify several thousand ponds and 74 long-lost temples.
The researchers concluded the complex irrigation network that provided the basis for the settlement's rice agricultural extended 20-25 kilometers out from Angkor city, to the north and south to the border of Lake Tonle Sap.
