Attempted background: Cambodia was the historic center of multiple kingdoms that dominated the region from the edge of modern Burma through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia to south Vietnam. These kingdoms were often ruled via local kings and vacillated between state religions under the successive influence of Indian Hindu brahmins and Buddhist monks. In essence, these were cultural outposts of India. The north-easternmost, Champa, was half-way up modern Vietnam, quite close to the border of modern China.

Archaeology around the region was kicked off largely by the French in the colonial period, and has been moving forward in leaps and bounds of late, due to improved archaeological techniques, access to satellite data, and improved understanding of ancient sources. The primary textual sources on the region are Chinese, but the city described here may pre-date most of those sources - the earliest of which mostly described Funan, a city-state by the Mekong river in far southeastern Cambodia near the modern Vietnamese border. Angkor came later, but evidence is scant regarding the nature of its relationship to other kingdoms such as Champa and Zhenla. This find may help in that area.

Original article: http://www.theage.com.au/world/the-lost-city-20130614-2o9k7....

Thanks! The slideshow there gives little taste of it, too: http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/world/lost-civilizatio...

Lidar (the technology mentioned in the article) is completely changing the field of archaeology. If you have access to the New Yorker, this article (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/06/130506fa_fact_...) is well worth a read.

"Injured in three landmine explosions and wearing a prosthetic plastic leg, Heng Heap said..."

The Indiana Jones movies always show ancient traps set around ruins. Maybe they should work in some of the modern day traps as well

In the era of Indiana Jones, were landmines laid in the area? That was World War 2 era.

There weren't any landmines at all in Cambodia until at least the early 1970s. Most of them were placed in the 1980s.

Perhaps Uncharted, then.

This is great! Cambodia is a wonderful place to visit and this discovery will add to its already fascinating cultural history.

This reminds me of Kurtz's hideaway in Apocalypse Now. That film really made me appreciate how bizarre and eery the collision of cultures was. US imperialists/interventionists fighting the descendants of a culture thousands of years old.

It is brilliant to know that people can still go out and discover things like this.