Plain of Jars:Digging up more?

[GWR]

University of Iowa article on 'The Plain of Jars'. The photos are worth a second glance too:-

http://www.uiowa.edu/~bioanth/laoskeep.html

UNESCO on the same topic (with further sublinks on page):-

http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=2944

Joe Cummings (Lonely Planet fame) article:-

http://www.cpamedia.com/travel/plain_of_jars_revisited/

[ncr]

Nice, evokes some memories of my own visit to this fascinating area. I was there around Christmas 2002.

Some inaccuracies/factual errors in the first account though:

*Phon Savan, not "Phomsavan".
*The turboprop plane trip from Vientiane takes 45 minutes, not 1.5 hours! It's really just a short hop over the mountain range - the distance is around 180 km "as the crow flies".
*The main site is southeast, not northeast, of Phon Savan (and the other 2 big sites to the south/southeast of that). Some sort of map is always helpful....
*For better understanding, they should have mentioned that this is actually a plateau some 1050 m above sea level. ("Plain" of Jars - whoever coined that - is not the best name, as it leads you to believe that this is like a vast, flat river plain somewhere in the lowlands, with jars scattered all over it; in reality, it is more like a landscape of rolling hills, with a few distinct jar sites atop of such hills, all 1000 m high, as mentioned, and rather barren and dry, without a major river.)

Still baffles the mind to imagine the Americans dropped 2 million tons of bombs on Laos.... Think about it, with a population of only about 4 million, that equals one 500 kg bomb per capita. And that's the current figure, I don't know the population numbers for the time of the Vietnam War, probably around 2.5 million? I think there's no place on earth more pockmarked than the Xieng Khouang Plateau!

[ncr]

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_of_Jars
and http://www.spikemagazine.com/1203plainofjars.php

To further add to the confusion, in German it is traditionally called "Ebene der Tonkrüge" (plain of clay jugs), which is obviously a misnomer, as they are really massive thingies, hewn out of solid sandstone (and in rare cases, granite).

The Lao expression, much more accurate than either German or English, is thong hai hin, roughly "field of the stone jars".

[ncr]

The scarred surface of the Xieng Khouang Plateau on Google Maps:

An overview (http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=19.497664,103.138275&spn=0.584159,0.962814&t=k&hl=en)

Zooming in... (http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=19.419649,103.124199&spn=0.146111,0.240704&t=k&hl=en)

Detail (http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=19.431305,103.191662&spn=0.073050,0.120352&t=k&hl=en) : Phon Savan (upper right) and Xieng Khouang Airport (XKH) (upper left). The biggest site (Ban Ang) is located somewhere due south of the airport, where a small road branches off leading to the west. The old town of Xieng Khouang (effectively wiped out by bombs) was to the southeast, if you follow the bright white road down the valley.

[ncr]

On NASA World Wind (see also this (http://www.angkor.com/2bangkok/2bangkok/forum/showthread.php?t=1039) thread):

1 (http://tinypic.com/a282gk.jpg) and 2 (http://tinypic.com/a282lg.jpg)

View to the northeast. I did not turn on the placenames layer, as it becomes too congested. In the second image, Phon Savan and the airport can just be spotted in the center. Old Xieng Khouang is/was to the right, in the valley behind the tall rounded mountain. See how rugged the terrain is? (The elevation is exaggerated, of course.)

[GWR]

At least 2,000 jars still bury under earth in Xiengkhuang

(KPL) Laos and UNESCO survey team has continued their efforts to seek new jars in Xiengkhouang province, because of they believed that some of jars are buried under earth.

According to a news source from local authority of Xiengkhouang province disclosed that officials concerned were ready to discover in five districts, at the moment there is only one district (Nonghaed district) that team was exploring more jars. Due to this area was suspected that there are still many jars in Nonghaed district along common border of Laos and Vietnam.

Local authority explained that almost all districts had been already explored the jars for years it is possible that Laos and UNESCO team will re-conduct new discovery of the jars because they thought that it has not enough cleared as some of jars might be still buried deeply and scattered through out the province.

Now the total number of enigmatic jars has been discovered about 1,900 jars in seven villages across the province, but it was expected that there might have more than 2,000 jars.

The Plain of Jars in Xieng Khouang Province, Laos, is one of the most enigmatic sights in the world that many tourists want to visit this ancient jar site; meanwhile local authority has made hopefulness how to earn money from tourism business as much as possible.

The Lao government was working to clear the UXO off the plains, to make it possible for visitors to explore and appreciate the jars without fear on landmines. This is in cooperation with UNESCO, the National Tourist Administration of Lao PDR and the Ministry of Information and Culture.

http://www.kplnet.net/english/news/edn11.htm