Hintang Archaeological Landscape / Park

Another mysterious ancient site like the enigmatic Plain of Jars lies in the very east of north Laos: it’s the megalithic menhirs of Hintang Archaeological Park. The park consists of 72 different sites in the jungle with alltogether around 1,500 menhirs – that’s upright standing, long-shaped, pillar-like stones, hewn of schist. Additionally there are huge stone discs placed on the ground. The discs serve as closing lids for the entrances to underground chambers. It’s supposed by archeologists that the site was an ancient burial place.

Map of Hintang Archeaological Landscape

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Bombs on Laos

The American Vietnam War

The American Vietnam War (1964 – 1975) was the third biggest war in the 20th century. 3.000.000 million Vietnamese lost their lives during the war, while 75.000 GI’s American GI’s were killed. There was also a lot of unrest in America itself, for millions of Americans were mobilizing against this war, and further millions of people in other western countries. There are a lot of documentaries and movies about this war – Apocalypse Now and Rescue Dawn are just two examples.

Not many people know that the war did not only happen in Vietnam, but also in Cambodia and Laos. That is because the war against Vietnam’s two smaller neighbours has never officially been declared. But it caused more destruction there than in Vietnam itself. The consequence in Cambodia was the total breakdown of civil society and the four years lasting rule of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge terror regime, which committed a genocide against the Cambodian population, killing two of the eight million Cambodian people. Before the American intervention Cambodia was among the most peaceful countries in the world.

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The Secret War in Laos

The American Secret Service CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) infiltrated Laos already after the French Indochina War. The CIA initiated from 1960 on a secret war here with a huge impact on the Laotian people in long term. Military air bases were built, among them infamous Long Cheng and others as e.g. the one in Vang Vieng. The Secret War was one of the biggest CIA operations in history and it’s official target was, among others, the destruction of the Ho-Chi-Minh-Trail, who was leading through parts of the Laotian-Vietnamese border region in the jungle. The Ho-Chi-Minh-Trail was the supply line for the north-Vietnamese troops leading to south Vietnam. The Secret War also targeted the Laotian communist resistance movement ‘Pathet Lao’.

Although also the USA accepted Laos on the Genevaer conference of 1962 being a neutral country, President Kennedy ordered in the same year a grand operation there. The CIA built the huge air force base in Long Cheng / Laos, what was growing up quickly. Long Cheng, built inmiddle of the jungle somewhere northeast of Vientiane, became with 40.000 inhabitants the second biggest city in the country, after the capital. It was the largest airport in Southeast Asia at the time. The starting and landing of up to 400 bombers and air freighters per day made it for a time the most busy airport in the world – although it didn’t appear on any map, was never mentioned in the news and was even a secret kept against the US congress. This war, officially seen, didn’t exist. The CIA led it’s own war here.

For it’s shadow war the American Intelligence recruited a bizarre mixture of mercenaries, anit-communists, arms dealers, extrem right-wing adventurers, veterans of the pigbay invasion (Cuba), Laotian military and – drug dealers. They recruited also big parts of the Hmong people, a mountain people of the region, as soldiers in a secret guerilla armee. The Hmong lost thousands of people in the fights against Laotian communists and Vietcongs. Their war continued for several more decades after the Americans left the region, while they were now under attack of the Laotian army. Laos’ war against the Hmong is another dark chapter of the American Vietnam War. It’s another genozide and a direct result of the American intervention.

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The Plain of Jars

An Enigmatic Landscape

Avery peculiar sight is the Plain of Jars on the Xieng Khouang Plateau in north Laos. It’s a large landscape in the wider mountainous surroundings of Phonsavan town, covering an area of about 5,500 km2. There are now a total of 85 registered sites where each between one up to hundreds of huge megalithic stone urns are spread irregularly, without any pattern, over the countryside. The urns or jars are hewn out of solid rock. Few of them have a simple decoration, and only one single piece shows a human figure (the anthropomorphic disc, see below). The shape at the urn’s openings indicate that they had lids, and there are some few lids left. Their size varies considerably; the smallest have the size of an average dustbin, the biggest reach a height of 3 meters and weight up to 6,000kg. The Plain of Jars is one of the oldest archeological sites in Southeast Asia. And one of the most enigmatic.

A variety of some of the jars on the Plain of Jars. All images and photocomposition by Asienreisender

The Plain of Jars is situated on an average altitude of 1,200m above sea level. It’s therefore not so hot here as it is in lower places in Southeast Asia; in winter it can be pretty cool, also several degrees celsius below zero. The landscape, as it looks nowadays, is widely deforestated. That’s, in this case, not due to the rampant logging activities in Laos, but a long-term effect of the American chemical warfare in the Vietnam War. The agent orange didn’t wash completely out of the soil, because there is not as much rainfall here as it is usually in the sub-tropes.

The Plain of Jars is not a mass-tourist destination. It’s off the road between Vientiane – Vang Vieng – Luang Prabang and few tourists find their way to the site.

Since years there is a pending application to make the Plain of Jars a UNESCO World Heritage.

But, what is the truly strange site about?

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Noise Pollution in Southeast Asia

Among all the pollutants we are exposed to, noise pollution is certainly the most nerve-wrecking. Here a party, there a marriage, a funeral, a disco, karaoke, temple festival, a mosque, private house music, a fair, a building site, dog’s barking and howling at night, traffic, TV, radio, a workshop, a lawnmower, a truck’s engine running while the driver is anywhere around… everyday over hours, day for day, week for week, month for month – it never stops here. And the people of Southeast Asia don’t know any limits when it comes to noise pollution.

There is no privacy for the people here, they are not individualized. All is a common matter, mostly family matter. On the other hand there is no respect for public space or public concern. As they use the sidewalks in front of their houses as whatever they want, an extension of their homes or as a metal workshop, so they make a hell of a noise, pesting squaremiles with it, just for – well, for what? Just so…

What makes these miserable people so relentlessly noisy? Well, primitive people are noisy. That’s an observation many Westerners documented already centuries ago. Friedrich Gerstaecker describes an evening in a Javanese village, when he couldn’t stand the partying in the place where he had an overnight, but had to pack his belongings and to escape to the village’s edge to find some rest there. Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn depicts a village in which he came after days of hiking through Java and where he actually planned to rest for a few days. He left it early instead, for the locals had a three-days festival and the party noise was not to stand (Licht- und Schattenbilder aus dem Innern Java’s).

What was a nuisance in the 19th century or former times generally, is a monstrous pest in our days. Nowadays everybody can produce a hell of a noise with just a flasdisk and an integrated loudspeaker. Hours over hours over hours until deep into the night all kind of crap is blasted out now. Sometimes it starts already early in the morning, when the muezzin cries out his message (not seldom also mp3 based), Buddhists produce radio music, advertisements and long-lasting announcements via loudspeakers or the national anthem is played, accompanied by radio broadcasting. Or a neighbour can’t sleep and starts playing his favourit techno music, high volume, basses turned on maximum.

A great deal of the population is dull and literally retarded. They suffer inner emptiness. They don’t find any meaning in their lifes. They have no sense for what is good in life, no taste, have no values nor virtues. They suffer a very low IQ and have no morals. They can not love anything and they are not lovable. They are irresponsible and give a damn for the sake of others. Nobody ever cared for them, why should they care? Most people never ever read a book in their live, not even the lousy newspapers they have here. They watch TV of the lowest kind, not interested in anything of substance. The highest imaginable art for them is business, or better fraud. Cheating ranks high. Cheating and taking advantage of each other is common in families and among acquaintances. Gambling for money is a main passion. They live miserable lifes without any perspective. Lack of reason is replaced by superstition.

Deprivation plays a central role in it’s explanation, but it’s not only the material poverty what explains the misery. When people grow wealthy, what not seldom happens in booming Southeast Asia, they still remain dull. Deprivation is not simply material. Generation long deprivation is conserved in their heads and outlives wealth. Once wealthy, they want ever more and more. The dullness, the inner emptiness, the absense of anything what makes humans human, what creates a life what can be called somehow fullfilled, is replaced by superficial fun. Booze and noise are a central part of that. The seemingly happy people with their superficial friendliness and smiles cover a black hole behind the facade. Happy looking people are not necessarily happy. They have little control over their lives, they are uncertain and know extremely little about the world they live in. They suffer oppression, structural and open violence, physical threats, fraud, humiliations, and can do little about it. That’s scaring. Are they aware of that? Here and there it’s certainly dawning, but it’s not a nice feeling, though. But they can beat it down. Being noisy makes feeling powerfull. One can forget. At least for a short time. And then one can repeat it…

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Adolf Bastian

One of the notable travellers in Southeast Asia was the ethnologist (Philipp Wilhelm) Adolf Bastian (1826 – 1905), who travelled Burma, the Malay Archipelago (nowadays Malaysia and Indonesia), Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam in the years 1861 – 1865. Adolf Bastian wrote tons of records and published eighty books and more than 300 articles alltogether. His writings go very much in details. So far they concern Southeast Asia they are listed in the literature index.

Adolf Bastian is considered to be the first German ethnologist / anthropologist. He (co-)founded several scientific institutions, among them the ‘Königliche Museum für Völkerkunde’ (‘Museum of Folkart’, nowadays Ethnologisches Museum) in Berlin. Many pieces of his huge collection of ethnic artefacts from all over the world were displaced there.

Alone six volumes of Bastian’s work are dedicatet to ‘The People of East Asia’ (1866 – 1871), and there are more of his writings on Southeast Asian topics as Buddhism or the famous ‘inscription no. 1’ of Sukothai.

All his many publications contain detailed descriptions of the ethnics Bastian came in contact with. Often he is comparing very different peoples and their customs and particularly their mythologies. That includes also ancient cultures like the old Greek and Egyptians. Since his work is extraordinarily full with ideas, it’s not always easy to get a clear picture of his theories. His books and essays are also not easy to read; most of his manyfold implications remain unexplained and are therefore not understandable for a non ethnologist outsider. Bastian’s scientific reception is impaired by that since today.

Bastian emphasized the ‘unity of human mind’ (he called it ‘Elementargedanken’). According to this idea different peoples in all the different cultures all over the world show only a small variability in their basic world reception. The Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung adapted and developed Bastian’s ‘Elementargedanken’ to the concept of the psychological ‘archetypes’.

Societies in their geographic distribution with all the peculiar influences of different landscapes, climates and local histories differ apparently. People organize in response to that their social structures and mindsets. That shapes the cultural differences between the ethnics in different regions of the world. Bastian called that ‘Völkergedanken’ (‘folk ideas’).

Studying a great number of different ethnics around the world, Bastian concluded the ‘folk ideas’ as secondary to the ‘Elementargedanken’ of human’s psychic unity. The secondary layer, so to say, can only grow exclusively on the very basic layer. That explains the many congruencies of myths, legends, sagas and religious ideas of cultures in very different locations on the earth or over long periods of history (the old Romans or Carthageans).

Bastian critizised Darwin’s ‘theory of evolution’ and followed instead the theory of ‘evolutionism’. Evolutionism describes the development of all different human societies in the way of a higher (kind of linear) development. The highest stage in this concept reached the industrialized European (and north American) societies. Evolutionism is therefore critisized as eurocentric. It seems also somewhat teleological.

Adolf Bastian’s approach to ethnology was a scientific one, influenced by the naturalist tradition of Alexander von Humboldt and Johann Gottfried Herder. Detailed obervations, as they are manyfold expressed in his rich works, were the empirical basics for his studies. Bastian was particularly eager to study and document foreign cultures before they would come under European (colonial) influence and adapt to it. He was fully aware of the threat, respectively process of extinction, for these cultures which came from European colonialism and called it’s spread over the world a world fire (‘Weltbrand’).

One of the great merits of Bastian’s work is the valuable collection of ethnic research results among native people who were still widely untouched by western civilization. Nowadays such an approach is completely impossible. Almost all of the different people in the world are completely overlayed by the poisonous impact of western capitalism. The former local cultures are, so far there are still traces of them left, merely adapted, distorted and submerged to westernization.

Nevertheless, Adolf Bastian’s documentary approach gave some cause for critics who claimed his work lacks structure and systematic empirical studies.

Adolf Bastian died in 1905 in one of his voyages in Trinidad. His remains were later brought to Germany and burried in Berlin.

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Dust Pollution in Southeast Asia

Pollution is rampant in our times. Particularly in Southeast Asia with it’s economic boom and the low (or often: not existing) environmental standards. There are many different kinds of pollutions and pollutants. One of which it’s less known even being a pollutant is dust.

Dust consists of small particles of the most different kinds. They are smaller than 10 micrometer, some are as small as being measured in nanometers (ultrafine particles) – no more to see with the bare eye. Generally spoken, as smaller a particle is, as more dangerous it is for the health of a living being. For humans and animals it’s so that bigger particles can be physically absorbed, but very small ones penetrate the lungs deeply. The level of danger is also dependent on the shape, better the surface of the particles. Some are much more dangerous than others. So does soot for example consists of a very dangerous variety of fine dust particles (fine particulate).

A heavy or longer lasting impact of fine particulate can cause serious diseases, from caughing up to pneumoconiosis and cancer. In Germany the populations life expectancy is in average reduced by ten month due to it. According to the European Commission there are annually 310,000 people in the EU dying untimely due to dust pollution. In Southeast Asia the number will doubtlessly be much higher.

There is no harmless concentration for fine dust – it’s always harmful, and it’s harm increases by the degree of concentration and the time of exposure to it.

Continued:

Sources of Dust Pollution
Health Impact
Prevention
Dust Circulation

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Zhou Daguan: ‘The Customs of Cambodia’

The only written report we have nowadays about the medieval Angkor empire is coming from a remarkable young Chinese man who lived some 700 years ago, in the same time as the famous Westerner Marco Polo. It’s Zhou Daguan (also: Chou Ta-Kuan), who was a member of a diplomatic mission to Angkor Thom in the years 1296/97 CE. Within fifteen years after he went back to China he wrote a report from his memories, which is titled ‘The Customs of Cambodia’ (Chinese: Zhenla fengtu ji).

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Zhou Daguan (1266 – 1346 CE)

In 1296 CE the Angkorean empire was past it’s peak. After Sukothai’s rise in the west, and particularly the emerging empire of Ayutthaya after 1251 CE, the Siamese fought the Khmer more and more back to the east. The old Khmer arch enemies, the Chams, took their part in attacking Angkor from the northeast. That must have been very bloody wars. In the long run they led to the complete decline of Angkor. A final death push came in 1431 CE, when Siamese troops conquered and sacked Angkor Thom.

The edition of ‘The Customs of Cambodia’ on which this article is based on is the 1992 one of the Siam Society in Bangkok. It is a secondary translation into English from an originally 1902 translation by Paul Pelliot from Chinese into French. Meanwhile there is a new translation done by Peter Harris, who worked it directly from the original Chinese into English. It’s certainly a professional challenge to translate a medieval Chinese script into a language of our times.

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