Vat Phou (Wat Phu)
How did builders spanning the Chenla kingdom to the Khmer Empire terrace a sandstone sanctuary roughly a mile up a steep, holy mountainside and pipe a natural spring through stone conduits to bathe a sacred linga, laying out the whole axis centuries before the same sacred-mountain cosmology reached its fullest expression at Angkor?
5th-13th century CE (Chenla-era origins; standing sandstone temple mainly 11th-13th c.) · Champasak, Champasak Province, LaosAdded July 2026