January/February 2020 Issue

CAMBODIA: Workers searching through a pile of debris for fallen roof stones from the Ta Nei Temple in Angkor unexpectedly unearthed the head of an ancient bodhisattva statue. The sculpture, which is around 2 feet tall and dates to the late 12th or early 13th century, has a small Buddha figure carved into the hair above its forehead. In Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva is someone who is on the path of enlightenment to attain Buddhahood.

SRI LANKA: It was much harder for early humans to fashion small, delicate stone tools such as arrowheads than it was to make large, substantial ones like axes. Yet, by around 45,000 years ago, a community living in the rain forests of Sri Lanka had mastered this technology. A collection of microliths found in the Fa-Hien Lena Cave is the oldest assemblage ever discovered in South Asia. These advanced tools allowed people to thrive in the area’s difficult rainforest environment earlier than was once thought, by hunting small tree-dwelling animals.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: A wealth of biological material from two islands in the Persian Gulf demonstrates how well Neolithic communities exploited marine resources. For example, thousands of fish bones from the islands of Marawah and Dalma indicate that people living there 7,500 years ago used nets and traps made from date palms to catch a wide variety of fish. On Marawah, archaeologists also discovered the world’s oldest known pearl, a rare item that would have been used as either jewelry or currency.