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00:00Angkor Wat, the largest temple on the planet, built by the ancient Khmer
00:14civilization who ruled the tropical forests of Southeast Asia a thousand
00:20years ago. It's a masterpiece surrounded by the ruins of a huge metropolis hidden
00:27in the jungle. It's one of the most remarkable architectural and
00:31engineering achievements in all of human history. Now a team of intrepid
00:36archaeologists is using pioneering technology to reveal this ancient temple
00:42city is the core of something even bigger. Concealed for centuries beneath the
00:48rainforest canopy they are exposing a lost world almost twice the size of
00:54modern-day France. This is one of the most stunning monuments in the ancient
00:59world. How did the Khmer build their vast medieval empire in the jungle? Why today
01:06does it lie in ruins reclaimed by nature? There's sandstone blocks everywhere. To
01:12hunt for answers, our cameras have exclusive access to follow investigators as they
01:21use drones and helicopters to scan the jungle with lasers and embark on
01:27groundbreaking expeditions to track down lost temples for the very first time.
01:34There's blocks over here. Whoa! Holy cow!
01:40And to expose how the ancient Khmer rise to rule the jungle. We digitally rebuild their gigantic
01:50temples. We decode their engineering secrets and reconstruct their ancient society to reveal
02:00the true scale of this lost empire.
02:07Angkor, Cambodia. Hidden deep in the jungle are the remains of a civilization that thrived here a thousand years ago.
02:22The ancient Khmer. At Angkor Wat they built the largest single temple ever known. But the Khmer constructed more than breathtaking sacred structures.
02:38What most people don't realize is Angkor Wat is actually just a temple in the middle of a massive city.
02:44In the 1840s, the first European explorers fought through the jungle to come face to face with Angkor Wat.
02:56They found hundreds of meters of walkways carved with scenes of Khmer history.
03:02At its core, they found five massive stone towers that reach over 65 meters into the sky.
03:12And temple walls stretching across one and a half million square meters.
03:18Centuries later, modern laser scans have revealed it's surrounded by a hidden urban landscape of roads and canals.
03:27Once home to almost one million people, Angkor was the largest medieval city on the planet.
03:35Dwarfing the cities of London and Rome.
03:39The team who has revealed the hidden parts of the megacity that surrounds Angkor Wat today leads the charge to rediscover lost traces of the wider Khmer civilization.
03:55Damien Evans from the French Institute of Asian Studies in Paris and Sarah Klassen from Leiden University in the Netherlands are world leaders in using drone and helicopter mounted laser systems to scan the jungles of Southeast Asia for ancient ruins.
04:15Known as LIDAR, the technology fires laser pulses through thick vegetation to expose hidden structures that lie buried under hundreds of miles of uncharted rainforest.
04:28LIDAR changes our perspective. We can see traces of human activity left inscribed in the surface of the landscape.
04:34Sometimes it's pretty spectacular the remains of entire temples that somehow emerge from the forest using the LIDAR.
04:41This shows just how extensively this landscape was engineered, how they really worked with their environment.
04:47It's just revealed so many features that we had no idea were there before.
04:51LIDAR technology is Damien and Sarah's secret weapon. It gives them the edge in the hunt for the ancient Khmer infrastructure.
05:02We started using LIDAR a little under a decade ago and for us it was a sort of Eureka moment.
05:08The key piece of technology is the LIDAR scanner, a powerful airborne laser array that can penetrate the jungle canopy.
05:22This one's designed to be suspended underneath a drone. The drone flies along and it pulses out millions and millions of laser pulses every few seconds.
05:30They bounce back off the terrain below and then we're left with the bare earth. Just the terrain, the topography.
05:35These subtle lumps and bumps on the ground that indicate to us the traces of people who lived here a thousand years ago.
05:41The data allow the team to create LIDAR maps of lost Khmer landscapes.
05:47The maps help them plot expeditions into the undergrowth to investigate previously unknown structures and temples.
05:55After over a decade of using LIDAR to expose the remains of Angkor City,
06:01Damien and Sarah are now flying their LIDAR rigs to hunt down hidden traces of the wider Khmer Empire.
06:08The clues for us lie outside of the Angkor area and really all across Southeast Asia.
06:18What the team discovered at Angkor was just the beginning.
06:22They have scanned sites across Cambodia to reveal cities surrounding Khmer temples across the country.
06:30But this covers just a fraction of the land the Khmer called their empire.
06:35During the 11th and 12th centuries, they ruled territory in what is now Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
06:43This rapid expansion grew Khmer territory to almost 400,000 square miles.
06:50How did the Khmer forge this vast empire?
06:55Damien and Sarah believe one answer could lie with unexplored sections of an ancient transport network.
07:04Hidden deep in Cambodia's lush tropical landscape.
07:11Today, they are setting off on an expedition heading east towards the jungle along an ancient road.
07:23They want to examine what could be a new temple that's shown up on their LIDAR scans.
07:29They think its location, built alongside a Khmer highway, can reveal how ancient roads were used to tightly connect empire communities.
07:40In the LIDAR data, there's a feature that looks very distinctive.
07:43It's got a square, elevated area in the middle and a moat around it.
07:48Usually when we see these things, we know almost immediately that these are temples.
07:53It's possible that LIDAR has revealed this temple for the first time.
07:58To be sure, they want to examine the features in the real world.
08:03But first, they must find them.
08:06Using their LIDAR map, the team navigates the path of the ancient Khmer highway.
08:11Okay, so it's coming up.
08:13You think this is it here?
08:15Okay, it should be like right there.
08:17Under the cassava.
08:19The LIDAR has led them into farmland.
08:25Endless fields of cassava plants cover the landscape.
08:29The team must take their temple hunt through the crops.
08:33But first, Damien puts his years of experience speaking modern Khmer to use.
08:39You can talk to the little lady in the house over here first.
08:43Okay.
08:44See if she knows anything.
08:45Okay.
08:46See if she knows anything.
08:47Okay.
08:48So they know about it.
08:49A family living near the site confirm there could be traces of a temple nearby.
09:04So the southeast corner should be right over here, Damien.
09:09We just need to find some way of swinging into the left.
09:12Yeah.
09:13Maybe here.
09:14Here we go.
09:15Super slippery.
09:17Be careful.
09:18So right over there, there are a couple pieces of sandstone.
09:21There's a way through the cassava here.
09:26There's blocks over here.
09:28Here it is.
09:29It's absolutely a temple.
09:32Whoa.
09:33Holy cow.
09:35Amazing.
09:40Concealed by dense vegetation lies a huge, ancient temple platform.
09:46With at least two courses of laterite blocks, it probably goes down much deeper than that.
09:51It's amazing to see the architecture intact like this.
09:54I'm just trying to get rid of a bit of this vegetation while keeping an eye out for snakes.
09:58Take a look here, Damien.
09:59There's a huge sandstone block.
10:02This might be part of a pedestal.
10:04It's kind of hard to tell.
10:05Yeah, I think you're right.
10:06The pedestal marks what was once the sacred core of the temple.
10:11A pedestal is the centerpiece of the temple.
10:13So it shows you that there was probably a statue right in the middle of the temple.
10:17It's pretty cool, actually, to be able to find this here.
10:20Beneath the broken pedestal is a deep pit.
10:24It's a clue to how this imposing temple met its demise.
10:29What's happened is that looters have come through looking for a sacred deposit that normally sits under the pedestal,
10:34and they've kind of cast the pedestal aside.
10:37It looks like they've actually broken it up into pieces because there's another bit of stone over in the bushes over there.
10:43But it means it was a very substantial temple site.
10:45Looking at the lidar, you can tell that it's just absolutely massive.
10:49It's over 150 feet in diameter.
10:52This is huge.
10:53I'm shocked that we haven't documented this yet.
10:56Surrounded by the traces of a moat, the remains of a 50-meter square structure detected by lidar are confirmed as an ancient temple,
11:06previously unknown to archaeology.
11:11Similar sized temples found across Cambodia reveal how it would have towered over the local community.
11:20It's always very exciting to find a new temple that hasn't been documented before.
11:25But it's the temple's location, next to an ancient highway, that helps the team on their mission to investigate how the Khmer expanded their vast empire.
11:35800 years ago, this would have been tied fairly directly to Angkor by an ancient road.
11:40And these roadways played a large role in tying together this sort of diverse and far-flung places into one coherent functioning whole.
11:48This is like the focal point, let's say, of a community that lived alongside this road and was really one of the elements,
11:55the kind of major building blocks of the empire.
11:57In the 12th century, the expansion of ancient Khmer roads linked cities of the empire with Angkor.
12:04Located alongside these transport arteries, smaller communities flourished and built their own sacred monuments.
12:13What we're seeing here is evidence of the population of the empire.
12:17As roadside communities are uncovered by LiDAR, a picture of Khmer life along these ancient highways is revealed.
12:27It's a vision Damien wants to bring to life.
12:32When new discoveries are made, he communicates them back to a digital graphics team in Melbourne, Australia.
12:41Led by Tom Chandler, they use Damien's LiDAR data to recreate the Khmer empire in a virtual world.
12:49Hey, Tom, how are you going?
12:51Hey, Damien. What kind of data are you looking at?
12:53We just had the LiDAR mapped, actually. There's temples everywhere scattered alongside of the road.
12:58There's a lot more going on on either side of that ancient highway than we previously thought.
13:03There seems to be so much to uncover still, eh?
13:06Tom and his team have spent over a decade building their vast 3D model.
13:14As new structures are detected, they build them into their simulated empire.
13:20Their work brings scenes at roadside temple communities vividly back to life.
13:33But Khmer highways didn't just connect remote settlements.
13:37They could have played a vital role in the rise of new cities.
13:52Damien and Sarah want to investigate a different style of sacred roadside structure.
13:58Massive stone monuments known as rest house temples.
14:04Rulers at Angkor built 22 of them at regular intervals alongside ancient highways.
14:12For decades, it was believed that rest house temples were simple places for travellers to pray and lay their heads.
14:25But the team is convinced these sites could have been homes to permanent communities,
14:31who offered logistics and support to those carrying construction materials across the empire.
14:39Using their LIDAR map, the team tracks down an 800-year-old rest house temple along an ancient road leading out from Angkor.
14:49We know that there's a rest house in this location, but the LIDAR has revealed is all of these linear features that surround it.
15:04So what we're going to do now is we're going to go to the rest house and take a look on the ground.
15:08Yeah, we're right on kind of the bank here.
15:22So I think it's over this way.
15:24After homing in on the structure, they look for a way off the ancient road and into the jungle.
15:33When they reach the rest house temple, it's completely overgrown.
15:37This is the main axis of the rest house temple that we just arrived at, parked over here on the ancient road.
15:43And what we've done is we've walked around the enclosure and come up the main axis to basically the front door of the temple.
15:48As you can see, it's kind of blocked off.
15:51But the team is here to investigate the features that surround the stone structure.
15:57Pushing on into the jungle around the temple, they find evidence on the ground for the features on the LIDAR map.
16:04I think this is it.
16:07It's kind of elevated area, seems to go east-west.
16:10It's very subtle.
16:11It's much more obvious on the LIDAR data.
16:15Yeah, so I think sort of the main line is kind of this way.
16:18You see there's like termite mounds here, which kind of stick out in the LIDAR data usually.
16:24So yeah, that's that big termite mound just there, that lump in the LIDAR data.
16:29So it's interesting that sort of termites build along these embankments and kind of highlight it for us.
16:35I guess they like the slightly drier ground.
16:38Concealed by dense jungle, earthen embankments picked up by the LIDAR are hard to make out.
16:45But Damien believes they are standing on the remains of a settlement that once surrounded the temple.
16:50What the LIDAR reveals is that the temple is just the centre of a much broader occupation system consisting of small blocks which probably had wooden buildings where people would have camped out.
17:02Earthen banks, just visible among the dense vegetation, are confirmed as foundations where wooden structures once formed a settlement around this rest house.
17:13But the LIDAR is incomplete. It cuts off what could be an entire southern section of this settlement.
17:24To reveal the purpose of this rest house temple complex, the team must first discover its true size.
17:34They decide to launch a drone equipped with a high definition camera to survey the wider area.
17:39We can see that the trees continue, suggesting that there probably is something archaeological that continues.
17:46A line of trees continues to the south of the known temple site.
17:51In this part of Cambodia, unfelled trees left standing among farmland can be an indication that an ancient site lies within.
18:02There seems to be something in those trees. Whatever it is, I don't know.
18:06It's so hard to tell.
18:07A dense patch of trees conceals the unmapped parts of this ancient site.
18:15The only way to find out what lies beneath is a new LIDAR survey.
18:21As the light fades, they call time on the day's exploration.
18:25Days later, they return with a team equipped with a drone mounted LIDAR scanner.
18:38The drone launches and flies a programmed route across the terrain, aided by signal transmitters on the ground.
18:45To collect the most accurate data, team leader Jeremy Bartholomew must avoid flying in high winds.
18:56We have a bit scared with a lot of movement of the drone that we can see also in the controller.
19:02If we lose the radio, it's even more worrying. We just decide to cancel the mission.
19:05Wind can blow a drone off course. And if it goes out of sight, all radio control of the $50,000 LIDAR payload can be lost.
19:18But the winds hold, allowing the LIDAR drone to scan a rogue patch of trees that covers the missing southern part of the rest house complex.
19:30There's definitely something in those trees. I don't know how far south it goes, but it's interesting. Yeah, there's something there.
19:39After two hours flight time, the drone lands safely, having completed the full LIDAR survey.
19:45I'm very interested to see a degree of detail in the results.
19:48In Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, a team here at the Khmer Geographical Institute processes the LIDAR data.
20:02Damien works with director David McCartney.
20:07He's digitally stripped away the tree layer to expose a scan of archaeological remains for the first time.
20:14This is the old map you provided us, and this is the new.
20:24Wow, that's amazing. There's the big enclosure with the grid system, the residential grid, but there's a huge extension to the south that was completely off our original scans.
20:35A grid of earthen foundations that once supported wooden houses continues beyond the previously documented site.
20:44But the new LIDAR reveals more than just occupation mounds.
20:49So we can see the little drone structure? It makes sense?
20:54Yeah, it's a temple. It's a temple. It's a temple.
20:56A hundred percent. A hundred percent.
20:58In the original scan, we only got a part of the picture, and it's incredible to see.
21:02I mean, there's clearly not just one temple here, but there's two temples actually side by side. It's big.
21:07The drone LIDAR survey reveals the true scale of this ancient rest house temple site. It's an almost 700 metre wide complex attached to a second temple.
21:21Nobody has ever mapped or recognised that as being a kind of southern extension of that same complex.
21:28Constructed as the Khmer Road network grew in the 12th century, Damien believes rest house temple communities played a vital role in the expansion of the empire.
21:42What you can see is a whole aggregation of infrastructure, of communities, of places for prayer.
21:51What you had, in fact, was a whole series of communities living alongside this road.
21:55These are people that would have engaged with the movement of goods, things like stone and iron, so the movement of information across one of the major arteries of empire.
22:06Roadside temples turned Khmer highways into more than just roads.
22:13Ancient service station temples helped them become the lifeblood of the ancient Khmer world.
22:19Like a silk road of the jungle, they helped shuttle people and materials between cities to give rise to the empire's great monuments.
22:30But building epic temple cities hundreds of miles from the capital at Angkor was a colossal achievement.
22:37Without wealth, strength and leadership, the cities of the empire could never have existed.
22:44What was the source of Khmer power?
22:48One temple at Angkor city holds tantalising clues to the identity of a powerful Khmer leader.
22:57This is the bayon. Among 54 stone towers are over 200 smiling faces, looking out in all directions across the empire.
23:13This temple is in the exact middle of the city, and all of these faces on the towers give the impression that this might be a ruler.
23:24Each face is built using a technique reserved for monuments dedicated to gods and rulers.
23:31Khmer engineers began with rough blocks of sandstone and hammered wooden pegs into them so they could lift the heavy stones into position.
23:50Then they ground the blocks against each other to sand down their edges until they fitted perfectly.
23:57They piled the blocks up into stone towers, some up to 43 metres high, and finally carved them into gigantic heads, which ancient scriptures say were once covered in gold.
24:16The bayon stands as a testament to the power of the almighty ruler who commanded thousands of skilled workers to build it.
24:29Who is the man behind the smile?
24:35Clues exist among intricate scenes carved on the bayon temple walls.
24:40This relief shows a military procession, and it might even be a royal procession.
24:45You can see all of these war elephants as well as people on horseback.
24:50One smiling figure stands out of the crowd.
24:54A man with similar features to the faces on the towers strides at the front of the procession.
24:59He's the largest person depicted, and he's followed by all of the wives and children and even some of the queens.
25:07So all of this suggests that he may be a king.
25:10This may be one of very few images of one of the most powerful Khmer kings, Jayavarman VII.
25:16King Jayavarman VII carved his face looking out over the empire as a testament to Khmer imperial supremacy in the 12th century.
25:30Under his reign, more temples, cities and highways were constructed than any other ruler.
25:36But the secrets of how he forged the pinnacle of Khmer civilization lie with the origins of Khmer royal ascension over 300 years earlier.
25:48What are the roots of royal Khmer power?
25:54Answers could lie 25 miles north of Angkor, at an ancient mountain city, among the ruins of a colossal pyramid temple.
26:07This is Phnom Kulen mountain range.
26:13Damien's LIDAR scans have revealed an ancient mountain city, centuries older than Angkor Wat, beneath the trees here.
26:23Known as Mahendra Parvata, temple ruins and a sprawling urban grid stretch across a 20-mile-wide elevated plateau.
26:32Damien wants to investigate the ancient stone structures hidden deep in the jungle here.
26:39He believes the remains of this lost city's largest temple can reveal the identity of the first king of the Khmer empire.
26:48To assist in the mission, he's arranged to meet his colleague, Jean-Baptiste Chevance, and his team from the Phnom Kulen Archaeology and Development Foundation.
27:00They have investigated the mountain ruins of Mahendra Parvata for over a decade.
27:05And they know the jungle paths better than anyone.
27:10I've never ever been up here at this time of year to do field work in the rainy season.
27:14I can only imagine what we're facing.
27:15Yeah, it's challenging. It's definitely one of the issues here. It's the access to the sites.
27:22You know, the tracks are only accessible by bikes and they've been washed away by the rainy season.
27:28So it's a different environment for sure. We're on the top of that mountain and a bit forested still.
27:34The only way to get there is by motorbike. Jean-Baptiste leads the way through thick jungle and rugged terrain.
27:51After 20 minutes scrambling up the mountain, the team ditch the bikes to proceed on foot to hack through the jungle.
27:59It's obviously a bit thicker in the rainy season. Lots of vines everywhere. So just watch out.
28:09Their journey takes them past a stunning 9th century brick temple. One of the first ever constructed by the Khmer Empire.
28:21Its fine construction survives as evidence of their emerging power.
28:25It's really impressive, isn't it? A single tower surrounded by the jungle like this.
28:30Yeah. The bricks are beautifully in position. I'm amazed actually at the condition of the temple.
28:36This is Prasat Opalm, an 85-foot red brick tower surrounded by dense jungle.
28:44A single brick tower built on a platform with sandstone doorways.
28:49It's quite typical of this late 8th, beginning of 9th century.
28:55It's a, what, a 1200-year-old temple and it gives a very different look and feel to these huge grey stone monuments of later periods.
29:04This brick temple was built centuries before Angkor Wat.
29:08Jean-Baptiste believes it could have inspired the Khmer's greatest ever temple.
29:16It's a bit of a prototype here in a kind of laboratory of architectural form where it's been after reused and developed in Angkor.
29:24Today, the jungle conceals the ruined city beyond Prasat Opalm.
29:31In the 9th century, visitors here could have discovered the origins of the Khmer civilization.
29:38You have to imagine a flourishing city with lots of people, hundreds of people, if not thousands of people, building that city and living around those monuments.
29:47Today, now, it's very different. We have a few villages, but mostly forest.
29:52The emergence of Khmer power can be glimpsed through early sacred architecture hidden in the forest here.
30:00But the team are on the hunt for a much bigger structure that sits at the core of the ancient city.
30:06They track it down using Damien's LiDAR map of the city ruins.
30:15You can see clearly the link between the mountain temple and this particular site.
30:21The fact that there is a single axis just dedicated to that feature.
30:26We have the main ponds, we have the Raya Palace and the mountain temple, the two main markers of that city.
30:32Trekking on, deeper into the jungle, finally, the trees break to reveal colossal stone platforms.
30:45Together, they form a 100-meter-wide pyramid concealed by the jungle.
30:51It's located on the highest point in that part of the mountain.
30:55It sort of sits at the spiritual and geographic heart of the city.
30:58Yeah, it's like the religious center of it.
31:02Twelve hundred years ago, this temple was the sacred heart of Mahendra Parvata.
31:09Jean-Baptiste thinks it can reveal the roots of Khmer kingship,
31:14and that clues lie up at the summit of the pyramid.
31:17He has a little two-level platform, and then on the top of it there was this still very well-preserved pedestal.
31:28That's where you can imagine the most sacred ceremony would have happened.
31:32Right.
31:33This spot at the summit of the temple, at the highest point in the ancient city, is where a king could have been crowned.
31:44Sanskrit carvings give a glimpse of a groundbreaking event that was believed to have taken place at a sacred location at Mahendra Parvata.
31:54What it describes to us is a ceremony in which a particular king, in a city which it names as Mahendra Parvata, was coronated the king of all kings.
32:04It's therefore a reasonable assumption that the coronation ceremony may have happened here or somewhere nearby.
32:10That was really the genesis of what we know as Angkor and the Khmer Empire.
32:14This could be the site where the first Khmer kingdom was born.
32:23In the early ninth century, Cambodia was divided, as local warlords were embroiled in fierce tribal battles.
32:32Ancient scriptures say in 802 AD, a warrior prince from the island of Java came to Mahendra Parvata.
32:42He commanded a priest to perform a magical ritual that melded him with the divine spirits to become a Devaraja, an all-powerful god-king.
32:55Heralded as King Jayavarman II, he united the quarreling tribes into one nation to found the Khmer Empire.
33:04The ruins of Mahendra Parvata mark the spot where a civilisation emerges.
33:14Jayavarman II proclaimed the power of the gods here to become the first almighty ruler of the Khmer people, a royal dynasty that peaked 250 years later with Jayavarman VII when he built Khmer cities and temples across hundreds of miles of jungle.
33:32But why did it take 300 years for the god-kings of Cambodia to expand their empire?
33:40Sarah has gained exclusive access to a jungle excavation.
33:45It could reveal techniques pioneered by Jayavarman VII that helped him finally become the unrivalled king of imperial success.
33:54At a temple outside the walls of Angkor Wat, Sarah meets director of Angkor Conservation and Archaeology Im Sokrati.
34:07He believes decoding the purpose of this outlying temple could reveal a surprising tactic used by Jayavarman VII to expand his empire.
34:16This shows just how extensively this landscape was engineered.
34:22Just moments into the day's work, the team make a new discovery that could shed light on how this temple is used.
34:29No way, this pot?
34:31Yes, this pot, it looks like a pot, but not ceramic pot, this is sandstone pot.
34:40Yeah, it's amazing that it's here in situ. 800 years later, it's still here.
34:45What appears to be an expertly carved, upturned sandstone pot pokes out of the earth, right where it was left in antiquity.
35:06The moment of truth.
35:08Eventually, it's free and held in human hands for the first time in 800 years.
35:21So it's flat on the top?
35:22It's flat on it, and then, you know, it's not really a ball, but a flat surface, and then they use it for grinding the, you know, medicine.
35:33The top of the vessel is flat, a sign that it once served as a grinding stone used by priests to make ancient remedies for the sick.
35:44So this is a clue as to why this temple was built and what buildings were surrounding it.
35:49Sounds like we almost have a hospital.
35:52Yep. It's a real activity inside hospital.
36:02As the excavation continues, the team revealed two sandstone blocks.
36:09Sokraty believes they could shed more light on how this temple functioned as a hospital.
36:15What do you think these are? I haven't seen anything like these.
36:18These are rectangular sandstone blocks with depressions in the middle of them.
36:24For me, it seems that this is a fire pit that is used for, you know, ritual.
36:28Sokraty thinks these two stone slabs could be further pieces of ancient hospital equipment, fire pits, used during a spiritual ritual.
36:39To prove it, he examines a carved scene he thinks shows them in use.
36:44This looks exactly like what we have here, with the two sandstone blocks, one on top of each other.
36:51And there are the flames coming out. And that's the priest, I guess.
36:56The priest cut their finger for sacrificing the blood to chase out all the bad luck.
37:03Quite a visceral offering to make, to cut your finger and offer the blood into the fire.
37:09Sokraty is convinced the blood of a priest once fell on these stones in a bid to appease gods who decided the fate of the ill.
37:20It's a remarkable glimpse of how this temple functioned as an ancient hospital.
37:26This is just one of 102 structures across the empire believed to serve as healing temples.
37:40They form part of a massive public outreach project that helped Jayavarman VII keep peace throughout his expanding kingdom.
37:48By building 102 hospitals like this across the empire, Jayavarman VII would have gained favour with the population and these are the people that would have helped him build and extend the empire.
38:01Hospitals were a vital tool used by the king to gain the trust and respect of subjects across the empire.
38:08But they weren't the only structures Khmer kings built to exert control.
38:22The next step on Damien and Sarah's mission is to investigate the reaches of royal power.
38:28It takes them 200 miles out of Cambodia into Laos.
38:39They want to investigate the northernmost temple ever built by the Khmer.
38:44It could hold clues to how kings used new monuments to impose their rule at the edges of their empire.
38:51There's got to be some interesting stuff up in those hills, although it has been raining so it's not going to be an easy ascent.
39:01Pushing through flooded fields, they arrive at Wat Pu, a breathtaking temple nestled beneath a huge mountain.
39:13They work with Brazilian ground penetrating radar expert Tiago Atore.
39:24He sets up a moveable rig equipped with a powerful scanner that can detect objects hidden deep in the dirt.
39:32Oh, we have penetration.
39:34The team want to scan the ground between the two huge temple buildings.
39:38They think there could be hidden ruins buried below, a clue to why the kings of Angkor constructed the monumental Wat Pu temple here.
39:48As the rig moves, it scans the earth's surface to produce a reflection of what's beneath the ground in real time.
39:57Almost immediately, the device picks up a signal for stone.
40:01There is this strong reflection here, and there is this strong reflection here.
40:08This, I would say, if I have to guess, are foundations of a previous kind of floor.
40:16So it looks like everything was built on top of something else.
40:20Pretty exciting, Tiago.
40:22As the team continues to scan the temple courtyard, they detect more stone signals.
40:28We can see a square-like feature on the data that is quite interesting.
40:35It could be a former temple that will be older than this one that we can see above the ground.
40:43The ground-penetrating radar discovers what could be traces of an older, destroyed, pre-Angkorian temple beneath Wat Pu.
40:52Dismantling an older structure and building a new one on top might have been a tactic Khmer kings used to establish control in distant empire cities.
41:04We suspect what you're looking at here is a construction that's been built over an earlier, pre-existing structure.
41:10But it was also built for political and economic reasons as well, in order for the king to project his power over a fractious and difficult-to-rule empire.
41:19Rebuilding existing sacred monuments may have served to remind outpost communities of their overlords back in Angkor.
41:31But what drove Khmer kings to build new cities in far-flung locations in the first place?
41:37Davian and Sarah believe clues lie up in the mountains above Wat Pu.
41:46They gear up to set off on a hike in search of an ancient cave.
41:51This gentleman knows the way.
41:52All right, let's do it.
41:53The journey takes them through monsoon-flooded fields and up into thick jungle slopes.
42:06This is really the last time of year that I'd want to be coming through a place like this.
42:13I just hope that we have enough water.
42:16Finally, they reach a cave that they believe once served as a secret hideaway for one of the first settlers on the mountain.
42:24Here we are.
42:25This is it. This is the cave here.
42:28You see that inscription just underneath there?
42:31Oh, yeah.
42:33Carved into the rock are inscriptions written in Sanskrit and an early version of the Khmer language used centuries before the kings of Angkor came to Wat Pu.
42:44They set out the name of the hermit who lived in this particular cave.
42:51The carvings spell out the name Vaktra Shiva, the hermit who used this cave to show his devotion to the gods.
42:58This is where this hermit sat for presumably an extremely long time as a sort of spiritual retreat where he could go and escape the everyday world.
43:08So we know that before these massive constructions took place on the side of the mountain, there were religious hermits living in caves like this.
43:16Before the kings of Angkor built Wat Pu Temple and its surrounding city here, hermits devoted their lives to the gods of this sacred mountain.
43:25We have this huge mountain here, which was no doubt revered for many thousands of years before the Angkor period as a site of great significance, as the home of a powerful spirit that guarded over this area.
43:39But there are thousands of mountains across Cambodia and Laos.
43:44What marked out this mountain as spiritually unique?
43:48Its unusually pointed peak could hold a clue.
43:52From the dawn of the Khmer civilization, many people worshipped a sacred fertility symbol called a linga.
44:02At Wat Pu, hermits were drawn to the mountain by its linga-shaped summit.
44:08A feature later refined by visitors who chipped away at its sides and turned it into a sacred beacon.
44:15As the linga cult grew, Khmer pilgrims came to the mountain in greater numbers, eventually giving rise to a settlement at the base of this linga mountain.
44:31Wat Pu's natural linga inspired the Khmer kings to build a city 200 miles from Angkor.
44:38But Lingam don't just appear at Wat Pu.
44:47This is Khmer.
44:52A monumental temple city built 200 years before Angkor Wat.
44:58Ancient inscriptions here reveal that one of the largest ever linga once stood at the top of the city's breathtaking pyramid temple.
45:07It's truly amazing to see a structure that's this big built in the middle of the jungle.
45:16When the Khmer built the pyramid, it became the tallest structure in Khokher.
45:21Seven stepped platforms reached far above the jungle canopy.
45:26A man-made mountain in the heart of this jungle city.
45:31On the top, the Khmer erected a huge linga carved from stone.
45:37And it's believed to have been covered in gold.
45:39Why did they choose to expose this precious linga on top of a tall building and not shelter it inside a temple?
45:48The lost linga on top of the temple may have been the most prominent linga in the city.
45:58But Sarah thinks the key to understanding why lingam are exposed lie with five huge stone lingam that survive inside their own dedicated temples.
46:10This linga is huge. This is one of the biggest lingas that we've ever found.
46:18And it's amazing because it's carved out of a single sandstone block. It's incredibly impressive.
46:23The lingas at Khokher come in different forms, but one aspect links them.
46:31It seems they are all exposed to the elements.
46:37Sarah suspects they are deliberately constructed like this to interact directly with the natural world.
46:44She flies a drone to examine the top of the structure.
46:47I'm flying over the temple walls and I'm looking for some kind of evidence to suggest whether or not there was a roof here initially.
46:57Sarah thinks these linga temples are intentionally built without roofs.
47:02I'm not seeing any evidence to suggest that there was a roof here.
47:06If there were a roof, we'd see evidence of the structure.
47:09So there'd be large holes in the sandstone that could be used to support beams.
47:13No roof tiles have ever been found at these linga temples.
47:18Further evidence that they were built to be exposed to the elements.
47:23A connection to the weather could explain the true power of this sacred symbol.
47:30What it seems like is that the rainfall falls onto the linga where it is ritually sanctified before flowing into the large reservoirs and the other water holding basins at Khokher.
47:41Rainwater decodes the true purpose of the linga.
47:46As it falls over the linga mountain, it's blessed before it flows down to nourish the rice crops that sustain the city's people.
47:55Khmer kings expanded their empire into places they saw as blessed by the gods of the natural world.
48:07Their massive jungle temples attracted growing populations.
48:11By the end of the 12th century, the Khmer civilization controlled territory across hundreds of thousands of square miles.
48:23Kings ruled over millions of people.
48:25But to sustain their expanding empire, the Khmer faced mounting challenges.
48:34They needed stone to build vast temples.
48:38Iron to fight new enemies.
48:41And innovative engineering to cope with dramatic changes in the climate.
48:45How did the Khmer thrive against all the odds?
48:50And what caused the empire to ultimately collapse?
48:58In the next episode, the team ride rough on the hunt for a massive ancient quarry.
49:04This is where it gets risky.
49:07I'd say it's about 50-50 at this point.
49:10They explore spectacular ancient engineering.
49:15This is incredible. It's huge.
49:19And discover where Khmer kings made their last stand as their empire falls.
49:25This is unmistakably the city that was built after the end of Angkor.
49:55This is the end of Angkor.
49:56This is not a big adventure.
50:04This is a ship.
50:10This is a ship.
50:13This is a ship.
50:16This is the ship.
50:19It's a ship.
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