AKIPRESS.COM - Archaeologists have found medieval cities that are hidden under the thick jungle in Cambodia not far from the ancient temple city of Angkor Wat. The discovery was made using lasers and will shed new light on the medieval cities found throughout the region that were created by the same people who created the world’s largest religious complex, according to Inquisitr.

While the research has been going on for several years, the new findings uncover the sheer scale of the Khmer Empire’s urban sprawl and temple complexes to be significantly bigger than was previously thought.

The research reportedly draws on airborne laser scanning technology known as lidar, and will be unveiled in full at the Royal Geographic Society in London on June 13 by Australian archaeologist Damian Evans.

“We always imagined that their great cities surrounded the monuments in antiquity,” Evans says. “But now we can see them with incredible precision and detail, in some places for the very first time, but in most places where we already had a vague idea that cities must be there.”

The nearby temples of Angkor Wat have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site and were constructed by King Suryavarman II in the early to mid 1100s at the height of the Khmer Empire’s power. The awe-inspiring structures are considered by experts to be among the most important medieval cities locations in southeast Asia and are counted as one of the ancient wonders of the world, standing among the world’s largest pre-industrial cities.