Medieval Cambodian City Was World's Largest

Aug. 14, 2007 — 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 1,158-square-mile area.

The urban complex was at least three times larger than archaeologists had previously suspected and easily the largest pre-industrial urban area of its kind, eclipsing comparable developments such as Tikal, a Classic Maya "city" in Guatemala.

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 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.