If you needed any more proof we’re actually living in the pulp future of a 1920s dime novel, explorers have just used airborne lasers to reveal a long-lost jungle city:
The discovery of Mahendraparvata, a 1,200-year-old lost city that predates Cambodia’s famous Angkor Wat temple complex by 350 years, was part of the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer Empire that ruled much of Southeast Asia from about 800 to 1400 A.D., during a time that coincided with Europe’s Middle Ages.
Damian Evans, director of the University of Sydney’s archaeological research center in Cambodia, and a small group of colleagues working in the Siem Reap region mapped an area using airborne Lidar, a remote-sensing technology utilizing lasers. It showed them the outline of the ancient city
It had never been looted – still pristine. Of course, if you check the link, you’ll know where the city is now. No one’s really sure just how big it is, either.
[via Mr. Finfrock]