Khmer Mystery, Fou-nan (The Lost City)

This is a very interesting documentary, probably from the 1990s showing how scientists around the world, working in various disciplines, are helping to piece together the pre-history of great civilisations.

The focus here is on the predecessors to the great Angkor civilisation, and we see archaeologists, anthropologists and even nuclear scientists working in specialised areas to provide on overview of trade and civilisation in the ancient world.

The search takes us all over the eastern and western worlds – Turkey, the Indus Valley, India, Cambodia, Central Asia and China – and they are seen to having been in contact with each other from the earliest times.

Out of all this we get a fascinating background to the Angkor civilisation, which was one of the greatest the world has seen, it certainly didn’t arise without a long background of contacts and influences from various other civilisations, even though it proved to be unique in many ways.