As Mr. Stanaway said, above photos has the same fetus position as what we have in Sagada, Philippines. They say the reason behind this is because the dead shout part this world the same way before one is born.
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High Point
Photograph courtesy Damnak Tep Sokha
Perched in some cases on precarious cliff ledges, centuries-old log coffins—such as this one, pictured alongside researcher Nancy Beavan—and "body jars" are the only known traces of an unknown Cambodian tribe. Now new dating studies are beginning to assure the unnamed culture a place in history.
Ten such burial spots have been found in the Cardamom Mountains (map) since 2003, and at least one is at least 160 feet high (50 meters)—the intention apparently being that "anyone trying to disturb the burials would break their neck," said Beavan, who led the new study.
Beavan's team has radiocarbon-dated wood, teeth, and bones from four of the sites to between A.D. 1395 and 1650, placing them smack-dab in the decline of the Khmer Empire, based in Angkor. However it's unclear what, if any, influence the empire had on these mountain people, said Beavan, of the University of Otago's Department of Anatomy in New Zealand.
Until now, experts had no idea when the sites had been established or how long they'd been in use, she added.
(Pictures: Angkor's Ancient Enormity Uncovered.)
—James Owen
Published May 15, 2012
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Body Jars
Photograph courtesy John Miksic
Skulls and other human bones poke from large ceramic jars at Khnorng Sroal, one of the newly dated mountainside burials in southwestern Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains.
The bones were placed in the 20-inch-tall (50-centimeter-tall) body jars only after the bodies had decomposed or had been picked clean by scavenging animals, according to the study, which is published in the latest issue of the journal Radiocarbon.
"The Cardamom highlanders may have used some form of exposure of the body to de-flesh the bones, like the 'sky burials' known in other cultures," study leader Beavan said.
Placing the sky-high burials couldn't have been easy, according to Beavan. Systems of ropes and bamboo baskets may have been used to raise or lower the urns and coffins to some of the trickier sites, she speculated.
Published May 15, 2012
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Mountainside Mortuary
Photograph courtesy Nancy Beavan
Hewn from tree trunks some 700 years ago, several log coffins are pictured lined up like ramshackle piano keys beneath a rock overhang at the Phnom Pel burial site in Cambodia in 2010.
As well as being "a place apart spiritually," these "nearly inaccessible" burial locations may have been chosen to protect the dead, Beavan said.
(Interactively explore Cambodia's Greater Angkor.)
Published May 15, 2012
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Jarring Discovery
Photograph courtesy Ouk Sokha
Each of the Cambodian body jars (such as the one pictured here with bones at its bottom in 2010) had a hole drilled through its base, "perhaps to the ritually 'kill' the vessel"—to render it useless for any non-spiritual purpose, according to the new study.
The drilling "is part of the ritual of transforming that container, just as is breaking off the rim to allow emplacement of larger skeletal elements," Beavan said.
(Related pictures: Cambodia's Healing Fields.)
Published May 15, 2012
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Skybox
Photograph courtesy Nancy Beavan
Human bones lie inside a log coffin at Phnom Pel—one of four newly dated burial sites that mark the remnants of a vanished culture from Cambodia.
The burials date to the last days of the Khmer Empire, which controlled large swaths of Southeast Asia from its Cambodian base at Angkor, more than a hundred miles (160 kilometers) away. (See pictures of Angkor from National Geographic magazine.)
However, the empire had little cultural impact on the mountainside grave-builders, the study team believes. For one thing, the people of Angkor followed the Hindu and Buddhist practice of cremation, Beavan said.
Published May 15, 2012
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Circles of Life
Photograph courtesy Nancy Beavan
For the new dating study, wood samples were taken from only the outer—and therefore youngest—rings of the Cambodian log coffins, ensuring dates closer to when the tree had been felled. These and other clues are helping researchers slowly build a better picture of the people behind the perilous burials.
"These sites may be the only remaining evidence of this highland culture, and we may never be able to say for certain who these people were," Beavan said.
"But burial sites can tell researchers many things about a people, including health, demographics, and other hints about their lifeways."
Published May 15, 2012
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More Pictures: Bones Evidence of Himalaya Death Ritual?
Photograph by Cory Richards
Published May 15, 2012
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