Secret Towers Of The Himalayas - Discovery Channel (2003)

Description: The Himalayan Towers also called Stone star-shaped towers, are a series of stone towers located mostly in Kham, an ancient province of Tibet, in Sichuan and in Tibet. The towers are located in regions of Changthang, Gyalrong, Miniak and Kongpo. The towers can be found both in cities and in uninhabited regions. They have been described for the first time during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Carbon dating by Frederique Darragon shows they were built approximately 500 to 1,800 years ago. Since they are generally located in prosperous villages, it is believed that their primary function was as a demonstration of a family's prestige within the community. At that time, wealth was acquired especially by the trade with the Mongols. For strength, many of the towers use a star pattern of walls as opposed to a strictly rectangular method. Heights can exceed 60m.

Personal Thoughts: Was secret ancient technology employed to design these tall towers that have survived for around 1,000 years in very earthquake prone terrain? An interesting mystery indeed.

Video
ID : 0
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Simple@L3
Format settings, BVOP : No
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default (MPEG)
Codec ID : XVID
Codec ID/Hint : XviD
Duration : 44mn 51s
Bit rate : 950 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.103
Stream size : 305 MiB (87%)
Writing library : XviD 1.1.0 Beta2 (UTC 2005-04-04)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Mode : Joint stereo
Mode extension : MS Stereo
Codec ID : 55
Codec ID/Hint : MP3
Duration : 44mn 51s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 41.1 MiB (12%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 33 ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 504 ms
Writing library : LAME3.92
Encoding settings : -m j -V 1 -q 2 -lowpass 17.5 -b 128