The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Dylan Thuras 0:02
The first time he visited the Plain of Jars, so yeah, it was it was a university student. He'd been hearing about these giant ancient jars carved from rock since he was an elementary school. Why did your family decide to go see the Plain of Jars?

Unknown Speaker 0:18
Oh, because everyone wants to visit this for once term of their life.

Unknown Speaker 0:23
Like a bucket list?

Unknown Speaker 0:24
Yes. Because it's so amazing pressed. That's very important size for the LAOs people.

Dylan Thuras 0:32
So yeah, and his family had driven eight hours from their hometown, all the way to the Shang, Kwang province in central Laos. There were big mountains blanketed by the jungle in between them rivers and valleys full of rice fields. And there were also the jars. They're clustered in groups on the plane and in the forests. They're carved out of rock around and have a rim around to the opening at the top, kind of like cookie jars, but without lids. Except for the fact that they're gigantic. The smallest ones are three feet tall. And the biggest ones are more like 10 feet. Do you remember what it was like seeing it for the first time?

Unknown Speaker 1:19
The doc taller than me? That is a big jar? Yes. Yes. At the diamond, the diamond some of the job? About to metal and half

Dylan Thuras 1:30
hour, so you could crawl inside of one if you wanted to.

Unknown Speaker 1:35
Yes, yes.

Dylan Thuras 1:36
There are more than 2000 of these jars in Laos. And that's just counting the ones that have been found so far. Archaeologists have worked out that the jars have been here for 1000s of years. But how they got here, what exactly happened in the past? That is a mystery. Solia and other archaeologists are only just starting to unravel.

I'm Sarah Wyman and this is Atlas Obscura a celebration of the world's strange, incredible and wondrous places. Today, we're heading to Laos to visit one of the most important prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia. We'll learn more about the jars and how they got there. The generations of archaeologists who've worked to uncover their secrets. And what makes this one of the most dangerous archeological dig sites in the world. That's after this.

Unknown Speaker 2:46
There's not a lot of enduring mysteries out there. And the Plain of Jars is not giving up its secrets easily. That's for sure.

Dylan Thuras 2:54
This is Dr. Du Golda Riley. He's an associate professor of archaeology and anthropology at Australian National University. How did both of you become interested in this area of research?

Unknown Speaker 3:06
Well, we've worked in Cambodia for quite some time. And in 2013, we had the opportunity to organize and host the meeting with our Lau colleagues.

Dylan Thuras 3:20
And that's Dr. Louise Hsuan. She's an archeological scientist at the University of Melbourne. She and dougald have been working together for around 15 years now, most recently on the plane of jars. And then

Unknown Speaker 3:32
we became absolutely obsessed with the jar sites. And we're lucky to start working there with a really fantastic team of loud archaeologists.

Dylan Thuras 3:43
And what was it that made you obsessed? Was it the mystery that kind of hooked you and pulled you in? Yes, definitely

Unknown Speaker 3:48
the mystery and the sheer size of these jars. These landscapes are totally mesmerizing.

Unknown Speaker 3:56
It is just such a confounding problem that hasn't been explored for you know, in a major way since the 1930s.

Dylan Thuras 4:07
Here's what we know about the jars. First of all, there are 1000s of them. And as far as anyone knows, they've been sitting on mountain ridges, slopes and plains in Laos for the past 2500 years or so, in terms of what they look like. Some of them are sitting out in the open totally exposed, but others have been found buried. The jars are mostly clustered in groups, sometimes with as many as several 100 arranged in one spot. They can have patterns carved around their rims. On a couple of rare occasions, archeologists have found artifacts inside of the jars, but most of the time they're empty. Here's what we don't know about these jars. We don't know who created them, or what they were originally used for. We also don't know how these gigantic heavy stone objects are moved kilometers away. mountains and plains? Where did the people who made them live? And how widespread was their culture?

Scholars have been interested in those questions for centuries. But the first published research about the jars that we're aware of was done in the 1930s by a French archaeologist named Madeline Kalani.

Unknown Speaker 5:24
She was in her mid to late 60s When she first undertook her research at the plant of the jars in the 1930s. And she and her sister traveled there, after hearing reports of these megaliths in the mountains, and she set out to document as many sites as she could,

Dylan Thuras 5:46
that ended up being about 20 jar sites. And in addition to the jars themselves, Madeline Kalani found some human remains and what she thought could be a crematorium. She was the first researcher to suggest that the jars might be burial urns.

Unknown Speaker 6:02
Her work was phenomenal when you think she was walking around sleeping in the forest, just with her sister without much communication. So the work she did was quite amazing.

Dylan Thuras 6:15
Right. And also, I imagine as a woman in the 1930s, too, that that that was pretty trailblazing?

Unknown Speaker 6:21
Yeah, I think she was pretty tough cookie.

Dylan Thuras 6:27
But then, in 1955, the Vietnam war started, and it spilled into neighboring Laos. It lasted 20 years, and the amount of ammunition American bombers dropped on Laos, was more than the total amount dropped during all of World War Two by anyone. On average, the US hit Laos with one V 52 bomb load every eight minutes 24 hours a day. If you actually

Unknown Speaker 6:51
drive from Luang Prabang to Zhang Quan, it's actually a really beautiful drive. But the terrible part is seeing how pocked the landscape is with these bomb craters, then you realize that there's something like 80 million sub munitions that is still unexploded.

Dylan Thuras 7:10
These leftover bombs are called UFOs, or unexploded ordinances. And even though the war ended almost 50 years ago, these bombs are still killing and maiming people in Laos. Because a lot of the UFOs are on agricultural land, Lau farmers have to choose between their livelihood and their own personal safety, which risk is bigger, starving to death, or triggering a USL. Today, only about 10% of the now more than 100 known jar sites in Laos have been cleared of UFOs. And still not all of them are safe for archaeological excavations, which, you know, involves digging three to six feet into the ground.

Unknown Speaker 7:55
Every day when we're working at the Plain of Jars. At about three o'clock there's an enormous explosion. And that's the work of the USO teams. So they're every day out there collecting these and large bombs, 250 pound or 500 pound bombs, and they pile them up and then blow them up every day at three o'clock. It's a rather poignant reminder of the difficulties that the farmers and the people of shame Quang and other provinces in Laos have to endure on a daily basis.

Dylan Thuras 8:33
The second wave of archeological research on the plane of jars picked back up in the 1990s. And this time allow archaeologist was part of the research team. His name was Tulsa, senior Vaughn candy trongsa died last April. But most of the archaeological research happening in Laos today can still be traced back to him. He was one of the first archaeologists in Laos, and he played a huge role in really creating a new discipline for the LAO archaeologists who followed in his footsteps. Would it be accurate to say he's kind of the father of archaeology in Laos?

Unknown Speaker 9:10
Yes, I can say that. I can say that. He's the father of archaeology in Laos.

Dylan Thuras 9:16
Again, that so yeah, Bones it. After his first visit to the Plain of Jars, cilia went on to study archaeology himself. He now works for the loud department of heritage. And Tulsa was one of his first classes

Unknown Speaker 9:29
is very nice guy and he taught me a lot about the archeologico how to work in the field work. He taught me a lot in he was my boss, my teacher, my father. I love him. Everyone Everyone loves him.

Dylan Thuras 9:46
Talk says most lasting contribution to the Plain of Jars is probably the lengths he went to to ensure the site's would be protected. It's thanks to him the Plain of Jars was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019. I mean, and he's also been a huge part of securing legal protections for artifacts in Laos, and training a new generation of law archaeologists.

Unknown Speaker 10:09
I mean, in our last excavations there before the COVID pandemic, we actually returned to one of his original excavations that site one and expanded the area that he was digging. So his his research continues to inform us,

Dylan Thuras 10:29
Louise do gold and soya have all been working on the Plain of Jars as part of the same team since 2016. They've made some important discoveries, they figured out that the jars at one site likely came from a stone quarry about eight kilometers away.

Unknown Speaker 10:44
The one job that's over three meters in height, that one we've estimated to a 30 tongue. So how that was brought from the quarry sights, mind boggling whether it was elephants or on rollers or by some other mechanism.

Dylan Thuras 11:02
And like Madeline Kalani, they've also found human remains both inside and outside of the jars. But this time, they've been able to date that. So now we know they come from a pretty large range of time periods.

Unknown Speaker 11:15
And we have a span of dates from the eighth to the 13th century AD. But the fact that we have three different types of burial ritual would indicate that these sites have maintained important rituals, significant significance for quite some time.

Dylan Thuras 11:33
The jars are definitely associated with burial rituals, but it's hard to say whether they always have been or if they were originally built for a different purpose.

Unknown Speaker 11:45
There's some folklore to suggest that were used for decanting whiskey. Some other suggestions that human remains were decanted in them. And then once they were de fleshed, that individuals were buried around the jazz. But clearly they have a mortuary ritual significance.

Dylan Thuras 12:12
Do gold and Louie's emphasized that as they continue to search for answers at the Plain of Jars. One of the most important questions is how do we continue to protect this place? How do we best makes sure that it will still be here 1000s of years from now, so that other loud people and visitors from around the world can experience that sense of pride and wonder for the ancient humans who built this.

Unknown Speaker 12:37
I mean, I've had some interesting discussions when we were working at site one with a, an older, loud gentleman who was actually from America. And he was a refugee, but he got chatting to him. And he was telling me about his his time as a young boy, living not very far from where we were digging, and telling us about the B 50. Twos flying overhead and how his family had to jump into a hole in his backyard and how the ground shook and how terrifying it was to live at that time. And of course, these people weren't involved in the conflict. These were global geopolitical issues that, you know, a 10 year old boy had a little understanding of so it was rather moving, actually, having a chat with him and his return and his pride, to visit the Plain of Jars.

Dylan Thuras 13:29
Part of Julian's job at the loud department of heritage is to help educate more people in Laos about this history, and how they can help preserve it. He told me he's led workshops in rural communities, where he's explained what he does as an archaeologist, and what members of the community can do to help if they happen to come across prehistoric artifacts. It happens more often than you'd think, like Tom saw before him, so yeah, is helping to make it possible for other allow archaeologists to continue this research in the future. They'll be able to further the study of the Plain of Jars and other prehistoric sites to fill in the story of where they come from.

Unknown Speaker 14:08
The history can tell what's happened in the past can tell about the story of the country. The archaeology is the part of the history history. So if you don't learn about archaeology, you don't know the history. So that's why important.

Dylan Thuras 14:45
Huge thanks to Louise Sherwin dougald. Oh Riley, and SULI up anxiety for taking the time to talk to me for the story. If you'd like to learn more about the research they're currently doing in Laos. You can visit the link in our show notes. Our podcast is a co production of Atlas Obscura and witness stocks. This episode was edited by Tracy Samuelson. Our production team

Unknown Speaker 15:08
includes Dylan theorists Doug Baldwin, Camille's family Willis, writer, Arnold, Sara Wyman Manolo Morales, Botha lair Soos, Gianna Palmer, John DeLorean

Dylan Thuras 15:19
this episode was sound designed and mixed by loose Fleming. Our theme and and credit music is by Sam Tyndall. I'm Sarah Wyman. Thanks for listening.

Unknown Speaker 15:34
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