Spooky concentric stone circles
The author is studying laterite blocks here.
We had to weave through dozens of kilometers of forest roads, wade through fast-flowing streams at the beginning of the rainy season, to find the ancient stone tomb of Stieng located in the middle of the vast forests and mountains of Loc Ninh border. Our guide, Mr. Dieu Thoai, a young and cheerful man, told us as he walked: "This ancient tomb is located near the stone quarry being exploited by the local people. It is a vast, empty land lying gently on a hillside, called Bai Tien stone area by the people around the area."
At first glance, the cemetery gives us a feeling of surprise and wildness because there are no people around but there are a lot of rocks. All the laterite lies on the green grass although there are no mountains or hills around. According to our observations, this cemetery has up to thousands of large and small rocks scattered around. In the center of the cemetery is a tomb made up of a stone circle with a radius of about 6 meters with about 30 sharp pyramid-shaped laterite slabs arranged around it, about 0.5-0.6 meters higher than the surrounding surface. It can be said that this is the center of this ancient cemetery and is also considered the eternal resting place of the owner of the cemetery, village elder Rlem, who first brought the S'tieng residents to settle here.
Talking about this story, village elder Dieu Vinh, 69 years old, a person living near this tomb said: When I was young, I heard the village elders in the area say that the stone tomb was the resting place of old Rlem and more than 100 other Stieng people. That was a strange event that until now, no one has been able to explain, but everyone believes it is true. During the funeral of old Rlem, there were 100 people who came here to see him off. While burying the village elder, it suddenly rained heavily, causing the sky and earth and all things to be submerged. Then suddenly, amidst a thunderous, earth-shattering sound, the bodies of the village elder and all those who accompanied him were turned into stone. Since then, the laterite tomb was formed and has become a sacred place for the Stieng community in the area. For them, the village elder and 100 people being turned into stone is a wish for immortality and eternity in heaven and earth, in the beginning of the world, hoping that the descendants of the Stieng people will later settle down and make this ancient tomb the center to live and develop, giving up the wandering life through the forests and rivers. In fact, listening to the village elder and touching the ancient laterite stones with my own hands, although I do not believe it, I still have a sacred feeling, feeling as if there is a presence somewhere of the ancestors, the eternal owners of this wild land.
According to our research, in addition to the central tomb in the middle, there are also large stones surrounding it in a circle. Specifically, in addition to the circle of the old Rlem tomb, the two outer stone circles are quite large, made up of scattered stone blocks, arranged next to each other in a fixed but concentric order. Currently, these two outer stone circles have been disturbed a lot due to the fluctuations of time and humans. Specifically, the second stone circle has an estimated diameter of 20 meters with hundreds of laterite stones surrounding it. Now they only have half of the laterite stones because many of the blocks have been moved elsewhere, but its traces still remain, although quite faint. Finally, the third stone circle is said to surround, concentric with the other two circles, with a radius of about a hundred meters, very large. It can be said that the strange and quite precise arrangement of concentric stone circles makes many people feel doubtful because many years ago, it was very difficult to arrange concentric stone circles so precisely. Although we have not been allowed to excavate to know exactly what is underneath those strange laterite slabs, we can imagine that it will certainly contain many interesting mysteries of the culture of the Stieng community here.
Risk of Disappearance
As we mentioned above, this ancient laterite tomb is located near the quarry being exploited by the people, making them vulnerable to being crushed and loaded onto trucks at any time. According to Mr. Dieu Thoai, a few years ago, a local stone owner had a plan to blast this ancient tomb to get the stone, but the incident was soon discovered and promptly prevented by the local authorities. Also according to Mr. Thoai, currently around this area there are many such stone mining facilities and the ancient stone site can be exploited at any time because the trucks and rock blasting mines here operate day and night. If there is no timely intervention, in just a short time, bulldozers can completely encroach on this stone tomb area. Therefore, recently, a number of scientific delegations from Binh Phuoc province have conducted surveys of this stone tomb relic complex. Although no official conclusion has been made, the survey team has confirmed that the stone tomb area could be the burial place of the chieftains of the S'tieng people or could be a stone altar to worship the sky and pray for rain. On the contrary, many other opinions about this stone tomb area believe that the stone tomb area with thousands of laterite blocks and concentric stone circles is a masterpiece of nature, formed randomly, without the intervention of human hands. It can be considered a strange thing in life like other stone groups that humans have discovered.
Although science has not yet come to an exact conclusion about the origin of the stone tomb, according to the people, many strange things have happened around this laterite tomb. That is, during the war, almost the border area of Loc Ninh, the cradle of the Southern liberation movement and the headquarters of the revolution, had to endure a lot of bombs and bullets from the enemy. Although other mountains, forests, and streams were plowed and scattered by bombs and bullets, this ancient tomb remained intact, not at all damaged. People also said that they did not understand why the enemy bombs and bullets kept "avoiding" this tomb even though it was very empty and isolated in an extremely confusing way. That is why the Stieng people still consider this ancient tomb an inviolable sacred treasure of their nation.
According to Mr. Tran Thanh Tung, director of Binh Phuoc Provincial Museum, this Bai Tien relic site is certainly a valuable archaeological site because the stone circles arranged like that must have been made by human hands and not simply a natural formation. Ignoring the mysterious stories passed down by the people, this place contains many research values about the ancient Stieng people, the first inhabitants of the land of Loc Ninh, Binh Long... today. Therefore, in the near future, the museum will research the exact age and age of the stone artifacts at Bai Tien to determine the doubts as well as accurately explain the mysterious stories of the people.
It can be said that what Mr. Tung explained is also somewhat consistent with the cultural beliefs of using stones in the cultural life of the S'tieng people. According to the village elders in the Loc An area, stones have long played a very important role in their worship beliefs. From grave abandonment rituals, new rice offerings, funerals or weddings... the villagers all have to worship stones. Therefore, the stone tomb area has gradually become sacred to the people without them knowing.
