Unearthing Angkor truths an inch at a time

Forget six feet under. We were eight feet under, heading for 12.

Talk about culture shock. Two days after leaving Boston, we were exhuming the bones of men, women, and children who had been laid to rest millennia ago.

We had decided our first trip to Southeast Asia would involve more than museums and bus tours. We wanted to experience the nitty-gritty of Thailand, and working on our hands and knees here in Ban Non Wat, a village northeast of Bangkok, we did just that.

With nine other volunteers from around the world, we were taking part in an archeological expedition sponsored by Earthwatch Institute, searching for answers to the origins of the fabulous Angkor civilization.

In the late 1940s, aerial reconnaissance of the region near the Cambodian border revealed a strange phenomenon: Many of the tiny hamlets that dotted the countryside appeared to be in the middle of faint but unmistakable circular depressions.

Closer inspection revealed that these hamlets were built on low mounds surrounded by a system of shallow moats, apparently scooped from the earth thousands of years go. Today these prehistoric moats have become exhibit A in a revolutionary theory about the beginnings of prehistoric civilization in Southeast Asia.

Until recently, conventional wisdom of archeologists and anthropologists held that the influence of advanced societies in India and China gradually spread south and east into what is now Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. It was believed that Indian technology was responsible for construction of the fabulous religious temple in Cambodia known as Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world. Built between 1113 and 1150, it represents one of mankind's most astonishing architectural achievements.

Archeologist Charles Higham of New Zealand's University of Otago, however, has a different view of the origins of Angkor. Considered the world's leading authority on prehistoric cultures in Southeast Asia, Higham disputes the common belief that the indigenous populations of the region were backward people awaiting the arrival of technological advances from foreign sources.