Why Did Ancient People Create the Plain of Jars in Laos?

By Dig Labs Contributors

Source: Dig Labs Project

Little is known of the people who carved the huge containers and the jars themselves give little clue as to their origins or purpose.

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“Why Did Ancient People Create the Plain of Jars in Laos?” by Dig Labs Contributors is licensed by the Observatory under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). For permissions requests beyond the scope of this license, please see Observatory.wiki’s Reuse and Reprint Rights guidance.Last edited: July 9, 2026

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Introduction

It is assumed that Plain of Jars’ people used iron chisels to manufacture them although no conclusive evidence for this exists.  Little is known of the people who carved the huge containers and the jars themselves give little clue as to their origins or purpose.