The Plain of Jars: Bombs & Mystery in Laos[Graphics Warning]

Dark Roasted Blend ^ | Feb 2008 | Avi Abrams & Chris Mitchell

[BGHater]

Built by mysterious ancient people for mysterious purposes


(image credit: Chris Mitchell)

Ancient Laos legends tell of the giants who drank water from these enormous mysterious "cups". Similar sites were also found in Thailand and in North India. Their locations are strung along a straight line, which suggests that they were built on some kind of a trade route.




Chris Mitchell from Travel Happy sent us his travelogue about this ancient site:

The Plain Of Jars is probably South East Asia’s most enigmatic tourist attraction. Situated in the remote north east of Laos, the mountainous communist country which has only been open to tourists for just over a decade, are hundreds of huge stone jars scattered across several square miles.






(images credit: Chris Mitchell)


Jars of a deeply spooky nature

While most ancient Asian sites, such as the Angkor temples in Cambodia, have revealed many of their secrets, historians are still completely baffled as to where the jars came from, how old they are and what they signify. They are, in short, jars of a deeply spooky nature.





There are three key sites to see the Jars, three places where they are clustered together en masse, but there are apparently over 400 locations where they are to be found scattered across the plain.






(images credit: Chris Mitchell)


Gathered together at the top of this hill, there were around 130 of them scattered about beneath the trees, mercifully undeveloped by any tourist organization. Undisturbed amongst the vast wheat yellow and sky blue horizon of the countryside, the jars did indeed seem mysterious, but there was also a sense of serenity too.





They were all at least a couple of metres long, and must have weighed several tonnes each, some upright, some leaning after being embedded in the ground, some completely toppled over:





All of them are virtually black, and their tall, narrow, hefty bodies make them look like crude cannons, pointing in every direction as if fearing attack from all sides. The darkness of the jars’ stone also makes them seem distinctly funereal and a little sinister:



(image credit: David Hartstone)


The largest jar weighs around 6 metric tons:


(image credit: Keith Kelly)


On top of its mystery, the place may be riddled with unexploded bombs

Whatever its ancient history, the Plain Of Jars has had a turbulent recent past. Thanks to its proximity to the North Vietnamese border, this area of Laos became of key significance during the Vietnam War and so was carpet bombed by the Americans. Laos holds the dubious record of being the most bombed country in the world, despite never officially being involved in the Vietnam war at all. The legacy of the war is still being felt, with farmers and their families regularly being killed or injured by the unexploded ordnance which still litters the Plain. The Jars have been fully cleared of all unexploded bombs, but not straying from the designated paths remains imperative.




(images credit: GothPhil)


The lids for these jars are also quite mysterious looking. They have as much texture and ancient feel to them as Stonehenge.





(images credit: Keith Kelly)



(image credit: Chris Mitchell)


Some of them are filled with miniature Buddhas: which somehow feels very appropriate:


(image credit: Keith Kelly)


Speaking of the Stonehenge:

Another Stonehenge Found Deep in Amazon Forest

That's right, mysterious huge stones set in a definite pattern - an astrological observatory possibly 2,000 years old - have been discovered in the Amazon basin near French Guiana... (more info)


(image credit: Gilmar Nascimento / AP)


The site consists of 127 blocks, some as high as 9 feet (2.75 meters) tall. The stones placed at "regular intervals around the hill, like a crown 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter."




Scientists believe the site near the village of Calcoene, just north of the equator in Amapa state in far northern Brazil, could have been built by the ancestors of the Palikur Indians, and could be as old as 2,000 years.


(image courtesy Academy For Future Science, Brazil)

[BGHater]

Plain of Jars-Wiki

[BGHater]

Megalith Jars, Giants, etc ping. Fascinating.

[TribalPrincess2U]

Alien pods?

[ElayneJ]

Interesting -

[Gondring]

The jars are not cisterns??? They could have been used as “Truck Stops”/”artificial oases” for caravans, or forarmies, to allow for rapid strategic redeployment.

Not enough study if they don’t have a guess at an age. Anyone want to fund me to figure it out? Buddha figures are anytime contemporaneous to present.

[G Larry]

Food storage, water storage, burial,.....

[Lundy_s Lane II]

Maybe for food/grain storage. That would explain the lids. They might have been along a trade route or scattered along a hunting route.

[BenLurkin]

I guess they couldn’t have been for storage.

[PLMerite]

I remember reading that during the Secret War in Laos, someone floated the idea to take one back to CIA Headquarters and display it as “the Tomb of the Unknown Case Officer.”

[JimSEA]

Virtually no archaeological work has been done in Laos. Recently a small and low funded beginning has been taken in the Luang Prabang (sp?) area. It will be exciting to see what the civilization behind the jars was like but that seems many years off.

[left that other site]

Those are so COOL!
Please add me to your ping list...I LOVE stuff like that.
Thank You!

[crazydad]

The Nephelin.

[JoeMac]

I thought the same thing. If this was some kind of a trade route the jars may have been cisterns and storage jars with supplies for travlers or some such.

[Yardstick]

Gathered together at the top of this hill, there were around 130 of them scattered about beneath the trees, mercifully undeveloped by any tourist organization.

Ah yes, the superiority of communism demonstrated yet again.

Thanks to its proximity to the North Vietnamese border, this area of Laos became of key significance during the Vietnam War and so was carpet bombed by the Americans.

Why those mean old Americans, always bombing stuff.

[Gondring]

Yes...it’s difficult to tell if they are all the same shape or not, and what the water situation is there—would both food and water be required, or just food/forage?

[Lundy_s Lane II]

I would think that water storage would be different. Either grouped around streams that sometimes ran dry or why not dig wells.

What is most amazing about all of the ancient stone structures is how did they do it. What tools were used. Did they know to make a small hole and then fill with boiling water and form cracks. or build a fire right in the rock.

[SunkenCiv]

History Haunts The Plain Of Jars
The Telegraph (UK) | 12-9-2004 | Sebastien Berger
Posted on 12/09/2004 3:10:21 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1298111/posts

Forest Of Broken Urns [Borneo]
Archaeology Magazine | 4-6-2007 | Karen J Coates
Posted on 04/06/2007 2:37:36 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1813304/posts

Jars of wonder, jars of hope [ Laos Plain of Jars ]
Myanmar Star | Sunday, December 7, 2008 | unattributed
Posted on 12/07/2008 12:52:27 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2144560/posts

[SunkenCiv]

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[U S Army EOD]

Prior planning as bomb shelters?

[colorado tanker]

I'm trying to get a feel for what was going on around 1 AD, about when these things were made. Laos was a sort of a fringe area. The Chinese dominated Vietnam to the east and proto-Khmer kingdoms were just to the south and influential. It appears Buddhism might not have been introduced yet. I would think these things would take quite a societal effort to produce, but there wasn't much formal organization to Laos at the time. Quite a puzzle.