Fragment from my novel Wolf, describing Shwedagone Pagoda -

.  .  .  built up in layers over the centuries by famous kings and queens who kept encasing the old in the new, each time making it bigger and taller.  There were unknown kings and queens from more than two thousand years ago.  They were mostly Mon-Khmer.  There must have been tens of thousands of other religious patrons of many different ethnicities and city states and common people who contributed a lot, but no one knew who they were.

Kyi May Kaung