Brilio.net/en -Indonesia is home to many natural phenomena, but with its beauty comes the curse of natural disasters.
On June 19, Central Java suffered a series of floods and landslides due to an unusualperiod of heavy rain inthe dry season.At least 46people were killed and dozens are injured and missing. Sixteen districts were affected. The provinceis especially vulnerable due to itsmountainous topography, which leaves hillside villages vulnerable.
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Five villages in Purworejo district alone were hit. One of them was Sidomulyo.
Extraordinary discovery
If you have ever been to Central Java you find a land with mountains and fields mixed into modernity. But the constant stream is ancient temples, both Hindu and Buddhist that dot the landscape. They really are everywhere and some of the larger complexes and monuments are staple tourist attractions. Dieng Plateau. Prambanan.
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One name rises above all others though: Borobudur. This 9th-Century Mahayana temple is the largest single Buddhisttemple in the world and a Unesco Word Heritage site. The site and monument itself defies adequate explanation. It is by farthe biggest tourist attraction in Java and people come from all over the world to see it.
After the situation settled in Sidomulyo, people started to search for the missing, and found something incredible.
Underneath what had been the surface layer ofahill known as Bukit Pajangan (bukit means hill and pajangan means display), a stone structure200 meters wide and over 100 meters tall hademerged.
Nearby, residents also foundterraced pathways and what appeared to bean ancient bath. Once news reached regional officials, 1.5-meter building blocks of the volcanic rock andesite were identified.
Eko Riyanto, the antiquities chief for Purworejo, related his amazement to the press but declined to identify the stones as historical items without further clarification.
A team of 10geologists from the Indonesian Islam University (UII) of Yogyakarta came shortly afterwards to conduct more research.
Bigger than Borobudur?
That team is led by Ir. Harsoyo who confirmed temporary findingsto Bagelen Channel that the piles of stone do indeed form a temple, but hes unsure of which era it was built in. At a guess, he said between 8th to 10th century, which is the same era Borobudur was built in.
One thing hes sure of is that the temple is much larger up to ahectare in total and older than Borobudur, the world-famous temple discoveredin 1814 by Thomas StamfordRaffles.
Either way, the find has massive implications for the history of Central Java.