November/December 2013 Issue

JAPAN: At the Kami-Goten site in Shiga Prefecture, archaeologists have uncovered two siltstone molds for casting bronze daggers, dating to between 350 B.C. and A.D. 300. The design of the daggers—cast as a single piece with a long, straight blade and two rings on the pommel—presents a bit of mystery. It resembles dagger designs used by equestrian nomads in northern China and Mongolia, but contact between the regions would have been very unusual at the time. Perhaps the rulers of the area had established a trade route that brought such influences to them. —Samir S. Patel

CAMBODIA: Every time one looks closely, the scale of Angkor Wat appears to grow larger. Experts have recently turned to airborne laser scanning called lidar, which allows them to see through the dense tree cover that surrounds the site’s monuments. What they found is no less than staggering: that the planned, densely populated “urban core” of the city is some four times larger than previously thought. The finding lends further support to the idea that the city and population grew so large that the local environment could no longer support them. —Samir S. Patel

MADAGASCAR: It was once thought that farmers from East Africa and Indonesia were the first to settle this Indian Ocean island, around A.D. 500. Now, excavation at a rock shelter called Lakaton’i Anja has unearthed fragments of stone tools, bone, and shell in a layer dating to 2000 B.C., suggesting foragers occupied the island much earlier. How these earliest arrivals impacted the island’s distinctive—and now critically endangered—native flora and fauna remains to be determined. —Samir S. Patel