The mysterious plain of the jars
The mysterious plain of the jars
Scattered along a stretch of the lower foothills of the central plain of the Xiangkhoang Plateau, in the country of Laos, about 400 km northeast of the capital, Vientiane, there are a number of groups of which only It can be described as huge stone jars or urns of some kind. The mysterious artifacts extend over several hundred square kilometers, and there are thousands of them, ranging in size from 1 to 3 meters (3 to 10 feet) tall and all of them are made of rock, probably extracted from the foothills nearby. Now they are old and are encrusted with lichens, some of them show evidence of having ever had covers of some kind, but not all, and for the most part they are undecorated and without any type of carving or markings, except for one flask with a human figure engraved on it for unknown reasons. Scattered around these monolithic jars have been found human bones, ancient artifacts and strange stone discs as inscrutable as the jars themselves. This is the enigmatic Plain of Jars, and it's a strange, almost magical place that has surprised archaeologists and visitors for hundreds of years.
These strange monuments have been here since at least the Iron Age (500 BC to 500 AD), wrapped in mystery and legend, and nobody is really sure who made them or why, their history is full of myths and legends. The mythical origins of the mysterious jars are mentioned in the legends of the people of the area, where they are represented as the creations of a race of giants that would have inhabited the region. In these legends, the giant king, Khun Cheung, made them simply to contain the alcohol in the celebration of a victorious battle they had fought. After the giants left, they simply abandoned the jars, where they remained on the plain to the elements.
The bottles were submitted for the first time to a real archaeological study in the 1930s by the French researcher Madeleine Colani, who made the first real scientific observations about the bottles. He discovered that most of them were composed of sandstone, but that others were also made of granite or other materials, and he speculated that they would probably be used for ancient burial ceremonies, with the stone disks nearby, perhaps grave markers, but this is unknown. . and in fact, the purpose of the jars has been an enigma to the present. However, there were pearls and remains of human teeth found inside the jars and around them to hold this. Pearls and ceramic pieces were also around the jars, serving as strange clues that had not been fully understood. Later investigations carried out by other expeditions would find bones near the jars, supporting the idea that they were a kind of funerary device, with the offerings of accounts to the dead, and a cave has been found in the region that is believed to have once had used as a crematorium, although the locals believe that this was actually a large oven inside which the jars were made. In 1994, the Japanese researcher Eiji Nitta came to the conclusion that the jars would possibly serve as markers for the burial sites, but like everything else, it is only a theory.
In general, it is thought that the urns may have been used to house corpses early in the funeral rites, as they went through a period of transfer to the spiritual world. After this, the body would be cremated, and a second burial would be performed, although this is mostly speculation. Of course, there have been other ideas about what the jars might have been. One idea is that they were used to store food, while another is that they may have been used to collect rainwater as a source of water for the caravans that pass through the region, with accounts that are in possibly offerings of thanks or even used Praying for the Rain This is consistent with the fact that these groups of jars appear to be similar and in line with other groups of large unusual jars that extend as far as India and that lie along old trade routes. In the end, however, no one knows for sure, and those bottles still remain there as monuments of mystery.
It is unfortunate that in the 60s and 70s there was a campaign of relentless bombing carried out in Laos as part of the "Secret War" of the United States in the region, an attempt to stop the spread of communism through Indochina while all the eyes were on the most pressing Vietnam War. Laos became one of the most bombed countries in history, and this exuberant landscape was subjected to bombing attacks that left behind a wasteland full of craters. This was not good for anyone in the area, with entire cities erased from existence and tens of thousands dead, and certainly not good for jars, and many of them were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
There were also a few hundred thousand, according to a few million, of unexploded cluster bombs buried inside the land lurking the unwary. In fact, it is for this reason that many of the jar sites are closed to the public, and it is considered to be one of the most dangerous archaeological sites in the world. It is estimated that around 50,000 innocent Laotians have been killed by this unexploded ordnance since 1964, and it is considered that the earth is mostly poisoned by the ever-present specter of death in the form of these hidden bombs. Extensive removal campaigns have helped demarcate certain areas as safe, but the area in general is a lethal danger zone, which has made it even more difficult to study the jars. In addition to all this, it is known that the tourists themselves, who are limited to very few places, also damage the jars. Human activity has done an incredible job of eliminating these jars, something that thousands of years could not do, and making them inaccessible, and one wonders how long they will be studying these amazing historical oddities.
In modern times, these jars are still largely as mysterious as they always have been, and still manage to generate debate and discussion. For those who want to see them for themselves, there are several sites open to the public to see, with clearly marked areas that are free of unexploded bombs, but you can not help feeling that being a few meters away could be a sure death . Add a sad aspect to this place, where these ancient peoples once took care of their mysterious business of installing these huge stone jars without fear of bombs, and whose mysteries remain lost in time.
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SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
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