Over 100 Massive 1,000-Year-Old Jars Associated With The Dead Were Discovered In Laos, But Who Created Them Remains A Mystery

Landscape of Nam Song River at Vang Vieng, Laos
worldwide_stock - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only

In 2019, archaeologists from the Australian National University (ANU) discovered 15 sites in Laos containing over a hundred massive 1,000-year-old jars made out of stone.

The stone jars are believed to be associated with the dead. However, nothing is known about the original purpose of the jars or who created them.

In the past, other giant jars filled with the remains of deceased individuals have been identified across hundreds of miles in the unexploded minefields of southeast Asia.

The latest jars were found deep in the remote and mountainous forests of Laos. They are proof that these types of jars were more widespread than originally believed.

Nicholas Skopal, a Ph.D. student from ANU, along with officials from the Lao government, came across 137 jars at various sites.

“These new sites have really only been visited by the occasional tiger hunter. Now that we’ve rediscovered them, we’re hoping to build a clear picture about this culture and how it disposed of its dead,” Skopal said.

Some of the jars weighed several tons, and many of them were mysteriously transported miles away from the quarries they were carved in. It is also unknown why the jars were brought to these specific sites. In addition, there was no evidence of human occupation in the region.

More artifacts were uncovered at the sites, including a collection of elaborately carved discs that were most likely used as grave markers. But strangely enough, the decorated sides of the discs had been buried face down.

“Decorative carving is relatively rare at the jar sites, and we don’t know why some discs have animal imagery, and others have geometric designs,” said Dr. Dougald O’Reilly, a co-leader of the study and an archaeologist at ANU.

Landscape of Nam Song River at Vang Vieng, Laos

worldwide_stock – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only

The carvings on the discs consisted of concentric circles, human figures, animals, and other designs.

Furthermore, there were artifacts typical of the Iron Age among the burials, such as glass beads, decorative ceramics, iron tools, discs worn in the ears, and spindle whorls for cloth making.

One finding that really stood out was miniature jars that looked exactly like the giant ones. But instead of stone, they were made out of clay. The mini jars were buried in the giant jars with the dead.

“We’ve seen similar megalithic jars in Assam in India and in Sulawesi in Indonesia, so we’d like to investigate possible connections in prehistory between these disparate regions,” O’Reilly said.

The 15 sites where the “jars of the dead” were found seem to be outside the Plain of Jars, also known as the Xieng Khouang plateau in Laos.

The plateau is home to 90 sites with thousands of large stone jars. The Plain of Jars is one of the world’s most dangerous archaeological sites.

Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. released more than two million tons of bombs on Laos to protect the Royal Lao government and prevent a communist uprising.

Approximately a third of the bombs did not explode. Since then, around 20,000 people have been injured or killed by the bombs that did not initially explode.

A team of researchers at Monash University in Melbourne actually used a virtual reality simulator to recreate the Plain of Jars so it could be studied without risking archaeologists’ lives. Hopefully, the future will bring more information about the civilization that built these jars.

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Emily  Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a ... More about Emily Chan

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