city of angkor 14th century no one knows
why the rains have stopped this great
city depends on the monsoon to fill its
canals and reservoirs its transportation
and agriculture depend on regular
rainfall but for decades this sacred
water has come little if at all
engineers modified the city's hydraulic
network to handle the reduced capacity
based rate and canals that were
previously curved to slow the waters
flow they also narrow channels block off
overflow gates so that nothing is lost
and even dam off parts of reservoirs to
keep the water level high then they pray
for rain and the rains do come however
not in a trickle but a torrent as if all
the water that had abandoned them is
coming home all at once it flash floods
the modified networks overwhelming
systems filling canals with sediment
busting gates and raising up to sweep
away buildings and people Angkor the
city built from sacred waters is
drowning exactly why the city of Angkor
fell remains a subject of debate because
no inscriptions or literature remain
from this period and much of what we
know comes from the efforts of
archaeologists and climatologists but
while these studies do give us a much
better understanding of the interlocking
factors that set Angkor into decline
we're still not so sure exactly what
happened when and which factors were the
most important so while we've tried to
organize these theories in a way that
makes sense to us please don't consider
this definitive so with that in mind it
starts with a death J Waterman the
seventh the greatest king of Angkor has
died while he's built more monuments
than all other rulers combined his
greatest legacy is the partial
transition of the Empire from Hinduism
to Buddhism the state has left strong in
the short term but overcommitted in both
infrastructure and military projects
within decades Angkor enters a long
decline and it may have been intentional
because new factors were making Angkor a
less favorable capital for the Khmer
Empire J watermen successors find
themselves frustrated by the sheer
extent of the city and its works
monumental temples and huge waterworks
can't be moved
making it next to impossible to
repurpose land the city's low-density
suburbs of farms and villages has
sprawled out to a size larger than
modern Paris
it can grow no further and rulers need
to expend massive resources to maintain
its existing infrastructure meanwhile
Khmer society continues to grapple with
religion in the wake of joy Ottomans
reforms Buddhism has taken root among
the Khmer people and increasingly the
Khmer aristocracy and Jai watermen had
been a Mahayana Buddhist a school with
an expansive and inclusive attitude
towards religious texts that suggests
there are many spiritual paths it's a
flexible malleable school one that
adopts local characteristics wherever it
spreads for example the idea of a
god-king but this new line of Buddhist
Khmer rulers have abandoned the Mahayana
teachings for the Theravada school an
approach with a greater emphasis on core
Buddhist teachings the monk hood and
orthodoxy and in Theravada Buddhism the
one that holds sway in India there's no
room for a ruler who claims to Finity
thus the theory goes the Khmer traded
their religious legitimacy for a
religion that provided centralized
religious control and greater
connections with Indian influenced
kingdoms which might have looked like a
pretty good swap because the Indian
Ocean trade was exploding states who
were able to tap into maritime Southeast
Asia were the ones growing in wealth and
power and Theravada as more Indian style
Buddhism probably greased the wheels of
trade the region had long been a trading
hub archeologists having found Roman
coins in Cambodia but previously it was
all land in river based now they needed
the coast all of these factors over
building infrastructure maintenance
diminishing need for temples and the
need for rapport led the Khmer to
increasingly abandon Angkor in favor of
a city to the south one that sits
directly on the Mekong with a better
road network and by the mid 14th century
these new cities are taking anchors
place as the Empire's
economic drivers both aristocrats and
commoners begin to move away from Angkor
and it triggers a downward spiral the
city's massive waterworks are what makes
its huge population possible to feed its
residents which number between 3/4 of a
million to 1 million people this system
must deliver three harvests a year but
conversely
Court also needs that large population
to keep the hydraulic systems running
the network will deteriorate if not
maintained and that maintenance is only
possible by levying hundreds of
thousands of laborers as the population
moves south to river and port cities or
possibly falls to epidemics like the
bubonic plague the labor pool for
maintenance shrinks soon silt deposits
and clogs begin choking the
interconnected system creating cascading
failures that cut the rice harvests
driving more population out those that
remain move further into the hills
cutting down trees to clear land for new
rice terraces but the soil they displace
inevitably runs downstream and worsens
the problem indeed even before the
floods come many of Ankur's greatest
moats and canals begin developing signs
of neglect layers of moss and plant
growth clutter their surface with
sediment from the yearly monsoon
remaining uncleared and amid all this
the climate begins changing modern
analysis of tree rings indicate that in
the 1300s Southeast Asia entered a cycle
of multi-decade drought the relative
warm temperatures of the medieval era
slid towards the Little Ice Age a
process that made normal climatic cycles
now known as El Nino and La Nina
particularly severe Angkor already
diminished scrambles to adapt its water
systems to accommodate the lower flow
and slower waters of the drought decades
and just as they finished changing
everything the next cycle starts massive
fast-moving monsoon floods overwhelm the
system dealing irreparable damage and
amid all this rival kingdoms are closing
in because the city of Angkor was not
the only powerful Kingdom in Southeast
Asia in fact they aren't even alone in
building monumental cities anchors
rivals are also accomplished artists and
architects as well the kingdom of champa
which invaded and sacked Angkor before
Jai Wharram and the 7th took the throne
we're building impressive monuments
centuries before the khmer at its height
their hindu temple complex of me--some
contains 70 structures with the oldest
dating to the 4th century but the CIAM
honored the Hindu Pantheon with an
architectural style entirely different
from Angkor see the chumps were
Austronesian part of the Malay
Polynesian language group that had
migrated through Southeast Asia and
to the Pacific Islands this is key some
argue to the unique shape of their
temple roofs that look curiously like
boats unlike it anchor the chums do not
build with stone instead they use clay
brick joined with an unknown mortar and
one theory holds that they would build
the structure with partially hardened
brick then light fires around it to
finish the process and once dried they'd
carve directly onto the brick face but
by this time the chomps power was on its
way out
along with anchor because neither could
compete with the Thai kingdom of IU taya
IU taya a city near present-day Bangkok
had successfully accomplished the
religious fusion that had plagued Angkor
while the king is not considered divine
he is still regarded as religiously
sacred a bodhisattva an enlightened
being who's chosen to stay and help his
kingdom rather than moving on to nirvana
and sometimes he'll even temporarily
joined the monkhood and enter a
monastery between royal duties this
compromise between the god-king
influences of hinduism and the orthodoxy
of Theravada Buddhism works perfectly
and this marriage of traditions is
mirrored in the beautiful temple
carvings of ayutthaya where Hindu myths
appear alongside scenes from the life of
Buddha and the city's architectural
style is similarly varied some temples
built to resemble Mount Meru like
anchors stand alongside stupas imported
from northern India and the Himalayas
the kings of ayutthaya have just gotten
their start as city builders but they
already have a taste for it and because
a you taya is less dependent on the
monsoon rains it's better able to
weather climate changes sweeping the
region founded in 1350 the aggressive
dynasty has spent the last few decades
knocking out rivals in northern Thailand
and now it turns on the ailing power to
itself launching a series of invasions
over the next 50 years
each time I Utah hits the Khmer more
population drains away from Angkor until
finally in the face of an overwhelming
Thai invasion the Khmer abandoned their
old capital and permanently relocate to
a new city in the south one with better
access to the Mekong and trading roads a
city called pnom Penh and it remains the
capital of Cambodia to this day but
first they evacuate whatever Angkorian
statuary they
they know what will come next the
invading Thais sacked the city taking
everything of value they strip gold from
buildings loot palaces and lift the
great stone Buddhist off their pillows
to install them in their own temples as
spoils of war when the Thais retreat
they leave Angkor a dead metropolis
still populated but no longer a city
gradually the jungle begins to claim the
jewel of the Khmer Empire and then a
hundred and fifty years later Angkor
receives a visitor a priest but one
entirely different from any that had
burned incense or chanted sutras under
its galleries during the past three
centuries it was a Portuguese friar and
though he would not live to return home
the stories he passes on will start
building a myth in the Western mind the
myth of the lost city special thanks to
our educational tear patrons Ahmed Zayat
Turk Joseph flame and Dominic Valencia
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