800 Year Old Stegosaurus Carving
Among the thousands of ancient temples and millions of carvings there is in one temple [Prasat Ta Prom] which was built in 1186 (some 800 years ago) which has a carving of what clearly is a dinosaur (Stegosaurus). In this same temple there are other animal carvings such as horses and rhinoceroses. There has never been dinosaur bones found in Cambodia and probably never will with more than 300 inches of rain a year everything decomposes very quickly here. Even skeletal remains from US pilots who crashed in Cambodia more than 40 years ago only amount to not much more than a small tooth or bone fragment. Bones do not last long in this climate. By carving a picture of a dinosaur they must have known what it looked like? How? They didn’t have internet, no National Geographic magazines, no university tours traveling to deserts around the world to uncover fossil remains. They knew what a rhinoceros and horse looked like (and they still live in Cambodia today). So, they must have seen dinosaurs too. So are dinosaurs 150 million years old or 800 years old? Isn’t that interesting?
Thanks for this post. Fits in nicely with dinosaur art from all over the globe.