<story><title>Archaeologists Discover Lost City In Cambodian Jungle</title><url>http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/14/191727408/archaeologists-discover-lost-city-in-cambodian-jungle</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>contingencies</author><text>Attempted background: Cambodia was the historic center of multiple kingdoms that dominated the region from the edge of modern Burma through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia to south Vietnam. These kingdoms were often ruled via local kings and vacillated between state religions under the successive influence of Indian Hindu brahmins and Buddhist monks. In essence, these were cultural outposts of India. The north-easternmost, Champa, was half-way up modern Vietnam, quite close to the border of modern China.&lt;p&gt;Archaeology around the region was kicked off largely by the French in the colonial period, and has been moving forward in leaps and bounds of late, due to improved archaeological techniques, access to satellite data, and improved understanding of ancient sources.  The primary textual sources on the region are Chinese, but the city described here may pre-date most of those sources - the earliest of which mostly described Funan, a city-state by the Mekong river in far southeastern Cambodia near the modern Vietnamese border. Angkor came later, but evidence is scant regarding the nature of its relationship to other kingdoms such as Champa and Zhenla. This find may help in that area.</text></comment>
<story><title>Archaeologists Discover Lost City In Cambodian Jungle</title><url>http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/14/191727408/archaeologists-discover-lost-city-in-cambodian-jungle</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>obtino</author><text>Original article: 
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