by One of Cambodia’s famous ruined temples contains an intriguing mystery: the Ta Prohm Stegosaur.
Northern Cambodia is home to some of the world’s most celebrated ancient temples.
A short distance from Siem Reap, a laid-back city on the banks of the Siem River, lies the Ankor Temple Complex. Stretching over many kilometres, and encompassing dozens of individual sites, the area is like an Indiana Jones fantasy come to life.
Angkor Wat is the best known of the ruins.
Built in the 12th century in honour of the Hindu god Vishnu, the elaborate construction remains an impressive sight. A stone causeway stretches over a giant, manmade moat, leading to a series of nested galleries and passageways that build to a tower at the temple’s centre.
For the society that flourished here, this was considered the centre of the universe.
The Angkor complex was built by the Khmer Empire, beginning in the 10th century.
Less well known than some of history’s great empires, the Khmers were among the most successful. Their armies subdued territory in what would become Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar; the Khmer kings ruled this vast area for more than 600 years.
Their capital city, Angkor Thom, was surrounded by a giant stone wall and moat 100 metres wide. At its peak it was home to 500 000 people, making it the largest city in southeast Asia.
To the east of Angkor Wat is another significant temple from this period: Ta Prohm.
In the present day, Ta Prohm is known as ‘The Tomb Raider temple’. Part of the Angelina Jolie film was shot there, and it aligns with the idea many people have of what a ruined temple should look like.
More degraded than Angkor Wat, it features walls covered in moss, floors with missing sections, and caved in rooms full of huge boulders and debris. Several large trees have taken root in the ruins, and now tower over the structure; nature steadily reclaiming this man-made site.
The temples were discovered by westerners in the 1890s, much recovery work and clearing of the surrounding jungle has occurred since then. At Ta Prohm, it was decided to leave it much as it was found, one temple in its original state of decay.
Its appearance is dramatic and exciting, one of the most popular sites on any tour of the area.
Ta Prohm was built in the late 12th century by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII. Many of the region’s significant constructions occurred in his reign, including Angkor Wat.
The Khmers were heavily influenced by Indian spiritual beliefs, their great temples reflect this, being dedicated to both Hindu and Buddhist deities. Ta Prohm translates as ‘Ancestor Brahma’, and was meant as a tribute to Brahma, the creator of the universe in the Hindu faith.
It served other functions as well.
Jayavarman VII intended Ta Prohm as a place where knowledge and spirituality would meet. The temple was a monastery, with monks residing on site, it also served as a place of higher learning, with students attending to access the temple’s large library.
Jayavarman VII also intended it as a tribute to his mother, with whom he had a strong relationship.
These overlapping elements contribute to the temple’s layout, which is more complex than others.
There are some aspects of the classic Khmer design, with a series of galleries and courtyards building to a central sanctuary. But most Khmer temples are symmetrical, to reflect an orderly universe; this is less evident at Ta Prohm, which features standalone buildings inside the grounds, and many smaller rooms and enclosures around the site.
All of the buildings are elaborately decorated, with thousands of carvings covering every available surface. Surviving Khmer records record hundred of deities depicted at the temple, the stone carvings also showing demons, mythical figures, the king and his court, and various animals.
In the southwest part of the structure is a carving that has become notable in recent years. It appears to show, a Stegosaurus.
The Ta Prohm Stegosauraus is a small carving, about 30cm across. The animal sits in a circular border, in a vertical row of similar carvings, one of many found throughout the temple.
It is located to the left of a door below a small tower, known as ‘Gopura III’.
‘Gopura III carries detailed decorative carvings. On the angles and corners of the porch are numerous representations of animals, both real and mythical. There is even a very convincing representation of a stegosaur.’
– ‘Ancient Angkor’, Michael Freeman and Claude Jacques
The carving shows a large, lizard like animal, with what appears to be spines on its back. Its head is down, like it is grazing; or possibly just shaped that way to fit the available space.
The resemblance to the well-known dinosaur, is uncanny.
The Stegosaurus was a large, plant-eating dinosaur that lived during the Jurassic period. Fossils of the animal have been found mostly in the western United States, the most recent of these dated to around 150 million years ago.
Its most distinctive feature is a double row of large, bony plates along its back. The animal also had a spiked tail, both are thought to have been used for defense.
Fully grown it was an imposing size, weighing between 4 and 7 tonnes.
The Stegosaurus ate low-lying plants like ferns, cycads, and conifers. Despite its massive size, it had a small head and brain, suggesting it relied more on its spikes and mass than intelligence for survival.
It is an iconic dinosaur, one of the best known from the Jurassic period.
But if it went extinct 150 million years ago, 85 million years before the dinosaur dooming asteroid even hit Mexico, how is there a carving of it in Cambodia?
The Stegosaurus carving only came to light fairly recently.
The guidebook ‘Ancient Angkor’, quoted above, was one of the first comprehensive guides available for the temple complex. It has now been reprinted many times.
The first edition, published in 1997, has the first known mention of the Stegosaurus carving. Although the authors do not say it is a Stegosaurus, or speculate on its origin, merely note the resemblance.
This relatively short documented history has led some people to suggest the carving is fake, only installed in the last few decades.
But there are flaws with this explanation. The carving appears weathered the same as it neighbours, and the temples are also patrolled by teams of security guards, so interfering with them would be difficult.
A more likely explanation is that the carving depicts another type of animal.
One possibility is the Javan Rhinoceros. The smallest Rhinoceros species, the animal broadly matches the carving: about 3 metres long, a metre and a half high, stocky of build, and with a small horn.
At one time the Javan Rhinoceros was widespread in Asia, found everywhere between India, China and Indonesia.
From a peak population around 1000 years ago, the animal’s numbers have declined steadily. Losing their habitat to farmers, and hunted by poachers, the rhinos are now heavily endangered; there is only one wild population left, in a national park in West Java.
But they would have been existent in Cambodia during the Khmer period.
Another suggestion is the Pangolin, a small insect eating mammal with scaly skin, still found in Cambodia today. The Pangolin’s diminutive size perhaps makes it less likely as the carving’s subject, although the basic appearance is similar.
If the carving is a real animal, a question remains: what about the spikes on its back? Some analysts have suggested these are not spikes, but actually plants, or some kind of background decoration.
Another suggestion is that it may be a mythic animal. Many of the carvings at Ta Prohm show images from myth and religious texts, and are not meant to be literal depictions.
It is even possible that the Khmers may have unearthed a Stegosaurus fossil, or a related species, and created an image of what they imagined it looked it.
The carving is not mentioned specifically in any of the writings the Khmers left behind. We may never know for certain what it is meant to be.
Although, for some the explanation is clear.
The Creation Evidence Museum is a Christian nonprofit organisation, located in Glen Rose, Texas. Founded in 1984, its goal is to collect and display evidence, said to support a literal interpretation of the Bible.
Among the beliefs presented is the ‘Young Earth’ theory: that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, as the time periods of the Bible proscribe, rather than 4.5 billion years, as determined by science.
To support this theory, the museum displays fossils said to be human footprints alongside dinosaur tracks, indicating they lived at the same time. They also present a replica of the Ta Prohm carving, stating unequivocally it is a dinosaur.
The replica is ten feet high, and one of the museum’s prize exhibits. Museum founder Carl Baugh has also sold copies on his website.
From its peak in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Khmer empire began a gradual decline. Different factors were at play, some shared with other failed empires of earlier times.
Internal conflict broke out, as different factions vied for control. Climate also had an impact, as an extended period of heating lead to drought and higher silt concentrations that ruined water used for irrigation.
Finally, the empire’s borders were attacked, by neighbouring kingdoms.
By the 17th century, the great civilisation had fallen, its mighty stone cities and temples abandoned in the jungle. And there they stood for three hundred years, waiting for their secrets to be rediscovered.
