FROM Indiana Jones to Allan Quatermain, fiction is littered with stories of explorers discovering lost cities. With that said, is it true that there is a 'lost city' in Kedah that is larger than Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple complex?
Verdict:
TRUE
At about 1,000 square kilometres, the Bujang Valley complex in Merbok, Kedah is far larger than the Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia.
Not only that, it is much, much older. Archaeologists have dated the complex to be at least 1,900 years old with some even suggesting that it is 2,535 years old.
This makes it a contemporary of Rome during its Republican era and the fall of Egypt to Persia
There about 50 pagoda temples, or candi, that have been unearthed but researchers believe that there are more still buried in the area.
In 2010, researchers from Universiti Sains Malaysia found the remains of a jetty, iron-smelting sites, and a clay brick monument dating back to AD 110, making it the oldest man-made structure to be recorded in Southeast Asia.
The site has yet to be added to the Unesco World Heritage List even though it first endorsed back in 1987.
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