Monday April 24th - Ancient Stone Jars and Did We Really Want Our Taxes Spent This Way?

The tour I've been travelling with did not include the Plain of Jars in its itinerary which was a disappointment to me. When I was planning in Florida I spent a number of days agonizing over this dilemma, as I really wanted to see this archaeological feature. To me it falls into the category of Stonehenge, Easter Island and other places where the hand of human ancestors has put great effort into hewing and transporting rock for reasons that we can't really discern with certainty today. To have been so close and yet to not have seen it was intolerable to me.



After many hours of researching, I found a local guide, arranged transportation and accommodation and set up a plan to leave the tour for a couple of days and visit the area on my own. The internet is a marvelous instrument of permission-giving to reduce the very scary process of embarking on ventures to places that feel truly remote and alien!

As I was leaving Vang Vieng, it was pouring rain, the airline had cancelled my flight to Vientiane the day after my visit and I thought I must be a crazy woman to set out in spite of these bad omens. When they set about putting my backpack on the top of the mini-van in the rain, I pictured myself arriving with everything drenched and an 8 - 10 hour overnight bus to Vientiane instead of a 30-minute flight!

But I have learned that brain science tells us that our primitive brain is very poor at predicting the future, so I set these concerns aside and ventured off as planned. Instead of keeping you in suspense, I'll let you know now that it stopped raining, so my things were dry, and after meeting my guide, he agreed we had time to finish all our touring in the same day so I could catch the flight back to Vientiane that same afternoon. Even better - that would give me a day in Vientiane.

So all turned out well except I think the hotel had bed bugs, as I ended up with a number of unexplained bites in places that mosquitoes wouldn't have got to!

So, enough of the prelude about my journey and on to the jars.

My guide (Tey Lassada - Phone 2022946979) - said there are 58 jar sites around Phonsavan (otherwise known as Xieng Khouang ), although Google comes up with a variety of other numbers, up to 90. Archaeologists suggest they are 2.5 thousand years old - dating from 500 BC. They are clustered in groups of varying sizes. The jars are carved from solid rock - either sandstone, granite or conglomerate and range in size from a couple of feet to 10 feet tall. Only 7 of the jar sites are open to tourists, because of safety issues related to unexploded bombs from the secret bombing that occurred during the 'American (Vietnam) War'.

This jar was split apart by bombing.

Archaeological interest began in the 1930's with the discovery of the sites by French anthropologist, Madame Colani. Because of the unexploded ordinance in the area, there has been no substantive research until recently and many of the jars have been damaged by the bombs.

The reasons so many bombs were dropped in this area is hard to pin down. My guide pointed out that these trenches at Jar Site 1 had been dug by the North Vietnamese Army. The jars are on hillsides and the North Vietnamese were on hillsides, so the Americans dropped bombs and defoliants on hillsides. However, it is more complex than that. I read also that the pilots didn't like to land in Saigon if they had bombs left  because it was unsafe, so they came to Laos to release bombs where there was no anti-aircraft defense. I also read on some sites that they would have to complete additional paperwork if they returned with unused bombs, so they just got rid of them. Because as it was all done secretly (without the knowledge of the American public) there were no rules of engagement, so the reasons were sometimes more convenience than strategy.

Here is Tey Lassada, showing the total size of one of the jars at Jar Site 2. All of the jar to the right of him is hollowed out, but the rest of it (to the left of him) would be left solid and buried deep in the ground. So a jar that rises 10 feet above ground would actually be a total length of 15 to 18 feet.
Tey described working with a team from Australian universities last year and showed me photos of some of their discoveries. Here is a link to one video I found online about the research http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4557769.htm The Lao government is hoping this work will pave the way for the area to be recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Archaeaologists now seem fairly certain that the jars are involved in burial practices, although skeletons are mostly found in the ground outside the jars, not in them. Grave markers, like the one above, seem to overlay the areas where skeletons have been found. Why would  people haul these huge pieces of rock for 10 to 15 km, insert them in the ground and then bury the bodies outside the jars? Online research suggests the current theory that they were used to decompose the flesh from the bodies, before transferring the skeletal remains to the ground!

Some of the jars have a lip instead of being flat on top.........

...........and lids have been found, suggesting that some were covered. It is speculated that these were used to store food - not for the living, but for the dead, similar to the practices of the Egyptians providing food and worldly supplies for their deceased.

I visited three of the sites - each was a little different.

Following this, we visited a village which uses scrap metal from American bombs to make spoons and other items for sale in local markets. They obtain the scraps from MAG - an organization that does bomb removal in this area. Your parents tax dollars paid for the bombs to be dropped. Our tax dollars along with other funding is paying for their removal.

You know there are bombs around when they are used as fence posts and the foundations of the raised houses. These ones have been defused.

The villagers have figured out how to take the scrap aluminum and melt it down.

They do this in little sheds in their yards, with just a regular fire heated with bellows. They weren't 'cooking' the day we got there due to rain. The use ash from the fire to make molds and create spoons, bottle openers, keychains etc. I liked the idea that at least this mess is enhancing their lives!

Notice the seat is made out of some part of an airplane or bomb.

The bombing occurred between 1964 to 1973, and over 2 million tons of explosives were dropped. That is the equivalent of one plane dropping bombs every 8 minutes for that entire nine years somewhere in Laos. This area was particularly heavily bombed. The trouble is, in addition to the terrible destruction that it caused at the time, 30% of the bombs did not explode, so Laos is living with the legacy of losing people on a daily basis even today, not to mention farmland that cannot be used, the money needed to clear the bombs from this largely agricultural land  and tourism that cannot be developed because of unexploded ordinance.

To add insult to injury, it is not just the big bombs that are a problem, many were cluster bombs which broke up into little explosives and became scattered over wide areas. There are huge efforts to remove the bombs - we saw many bomb removal trucks and trenches dug to clear lands. My guide said it will take another 35 years to get rid of them.

This hill has been cleared. After the trenches are dug, metal detectors are used to make sure there is no metal there and the trenches then filled back in after any hazards have been removed or detonated. This is now safe for farming as far as bombs go.

As a final, even more depressing note, the area was heavily sprayed with Agent Orange. When I asked about whether the lettuce with my lunch had been washed with bottled water (to determine if it was safe for me to eat).........

 

.........my guide said all residents here use bottled water to drink and for food prep, as the ground water is contaminated with Agent Orange. He said they eat all organic foods because of this and that it will take 100 years for the effects of this defoliant to stop impacting their lives.

It helped me understand why this area was so much more like pastoral land - the jungle had been cleared and remains so to this day.

I came here to see the Plain of Jars and I ended up seeing so much more than that. It was worth every inconvenience the journey has offered to understand, at least a little more than I did before .........