Fall of Civilizations Podcast - 5. The Khmer Empire - Fall of the God Kings

Episode Date: May 3, 2019

Deep in the Cambodian Jungle, a ruined city crumbles among the roots of banyan trees. In this episode, we look at the history of the Khmer Empire of medieval Cambodia, and the ancient mega-city of Angkor. I want to explore how this great civilization rose to a size and wealth virtually unprecedented in the world, how it overcame the challenges of its climate and landscape, and all the factors that led to its final, dramatic collapse.Credits:Sound engineering by Thomas NtinasVoice Actors:Rhy BrignellLou MillingtonSebastian GarbaczMusic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-fre…isrc=USUAN1100209Artist: incompetech.com/

In the year 1586, towards the end of the 16th century, a Portuguese missionary called Antonio de Magdalena was part of a group exploring the deeply forested interior of Cambodia. They traveled through the soupy heat of the Cambodian jungle, surrounded by the fluttering of banana palms and the chattering of cicadas. Their Cambodian guides had told them that the ruins of an enormous city lay somewhere here, in the jungle, but they didn't know the scale and grandeur of what awaited them. Magdalena was killed soon after in a shipwreck, but before he died, he managed to relate to a friend who wrote down all that he saw of these sprawling ruins in the jungle.

The city is square, with four principal gates, and a fifth, which serves the royal palace. The gates of each entrance are magnificently sculpted, so perfect that they look as if they were made from one stone. In the middle of the city is an extraordinary temple. The missionaries were astonished. This city was grander and more magnificent than anything they had ever seen back home in Europe. Great banyan trees and creeper vines clambered over the ruins. The city seemed completely abandoned, but here and there, Buddhist monks in tangerine robes still performed rituals among its crumbling shrines.

Half a league from this city is a temple. It is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen. It is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decorations. and all the refinements which human genius can conceive of. Amazed at the sight, the Portuguese asked their guides a flurry of questions. Who had built this place? How had they constructed such vast works of architectural genius? And why, after everything they'd built, had they left it all behind?

But the guides didn't know. They said only what their parents had passed down to them, that these great stone edifices had been built here over a period of centuries by more than 20 kings. The Portuguese asked what the name of this great metropolis had been, but the guides didn't know that either. They used just one word to describe it, which in the old language of Cambodia simply means the city, and it has come to be the name by which these ruins are known. This word was Angkor. My name's Paul Cooper, and you're listening to The Fall of Civilizations podcast. Each episode, I look at a civilization of the past that rose to glory and then collapsed into the ashes of history. I want to ask, what did they have in common? What led to their fall? And what did it feel like to be a person alive at the time, who witnessed the end of their world?

In this episode, I want to tell the story of the civilization that has given to the story of the civilization that has given to the world. given us some of the world's most iconic ruined places. That's the Khmer Empire of medieval Cambodia. I want to explore how this great civilization rose to a size and wealth virtually unprecedented in the world at this time, how it overcame the formidable challenges of its climate and landscape, and all the factors that led to its final and dramatic collapse. Stories of European explorers cutting their way through the jungle and the jungle and stumbling on the ruins of lost cities have always been popular in the Western imagination. But it's worth noting that although abandoned and left for the jungle to reclaim,

Angkor has never really been lost. Since its population left in the mid-15th century, it has been a site of constant religious worship. Its name was forgotten, its streets were taken over by monkeys, and banyan trees clambered over its crumbling stones, but still, farmers works the fields nearby, and Buddhist monks have always visited this ancient city to worship among its quiet ruins. The Khmer Empire ruled much of Southeast Asia from the 9th to the 15th century. At its height, it covered an area that today includes much of Thailand and Cambodia, as well as Vietnam and Laos. And at the empire's heart was the megacity of Angkor. covers an area of over 1,000 square kilometres, larger than New York City today, and between the 11th and

13th centuries, its wider agricultural area is thought to have supported at least 1 million people, or 0.1% of the world's population. That means that for a period of a few centuries, one in every thousand person in the world lived in the city of Angkor. So what happened to turn this once glorious city of gold into a crumbling ruin. How could the Khmer Empire collapse so completely? And what could this teach us about the challenges we face in our own modern world? After the first European travellers witnessed the ruins of Angkor, a steady trickle of visitors began to descend on the magnificent ancient city. Before long, everyone had their own theories about who had built it, as this early European source shows.

We suppose that the founders of the kingdom of Siam came from the great city which is situated in the middle of a desert in the kingdom of Cambodia. There are the ruins of an ancient city there, which some say was built by Alexander the Great or the Romans. It is amazing that no one lives there now. It is inhabited by ferocious animals. And the local people say it was built by forest. One account written in Madrid in 1647 even argued that this city must have been built by the Roman Emperor Trajan, without explaining quite how he might have got there. In fact, virtually nobody in Europe gave credit to those people who had actually built these great temples and palaces.

That's the people of Cambodia, who called themselves the Khmer. The Khmer are one of the oldest ethnic groups. of Southeast Asia. They arrived in the region from probably the area of southern China over 4,000 years ago. They were one of the first people in the world to use bronze and to invent the number zero, and they developed the earliest alphabet still in use in Southeast Asia. The Khmer were a proud people, but for much of their early history, they were ruled over by others. A great empire called Chen La had once ruled the lands of Cambodia. and since its collapse in the 8th century, the region had been broken up into a set of small

Khmer kingdoms, ruled by local lords. But one man would soon be born who would forge these disparate kingdoms into an empire that would once again rule over the entire region and become one of the world's great powers. The beginning of this empire is conventionally dated to the year 802, and it would be founded thanks to a man who would call himself Jaya Vaman II. Little is known about the early life of this shadowy warrior. Jaya Vaman II seems to have written no inscriptions or left many clues about where he came from. He appears to have been of aristocratic birth and began his career in the southeast of present-day Cambodia. But the name he chose for himself tells you everything you need.

to know. Jayavaman was the name of the last king of the Empire of Chenla, and in choosing the name Jayavaman II, this Khmer Revolutionary was making a very clear statement. I am the second coming of the kings of old, and I will return Cambodia to its glory days. At this time, the fractured mess of Khmer kingdoms across Cambodia were all under the umbrella rule of a power no in the inscriptions as Java. Some historians have argued that this is the island of Java that today is part of Indonesia, but others believe that it refers to the Cham people of nearby southern Vietnam, who the Khmer sometimes called Chavir. I think this is the most likely scenario, since the rivalry between the Khmer and Cham peoples will blaze on for centuries, and we'll hear

a lot more about it over the course of this episode. The Cham people got their name from the Sanskrit word Champaka, a type of tree known as the yellow jade orchid. But the Cham people were not as delicate as their name might suggest. From their capital in Vijayor, now near the modern Vietnamese city of Queen Yon, the Chamon, the chamois ran a powerful trading empire that built striking red stone towers and could muster vast fleets of ships with dragon-headed prows that crushed any resistance to their rule. But their dominion over the Khmer people was soon to be challenged. At heart, Jaya Vaman II was a revolutionary. He wanted to forge an independent United Kingdom for the Khmer people

and his campaign of rebellion was immensely successful. He first seized the city of Vyadapura in the southeast, and then pushed up the Mekong River to take Sambupura. He and his followers swept from southeast Cambodia to the northwest, and everywhere he went, people joined his army. One rare inscription shows how Jayavarman's campaign seemed to happen almost miraculously. For the prosperity of the people in this perfectly pure royal race, Great Lotus, which no longer has a stalk, he rose like a new flower.

But the more power Jaya Vaman amassed, the more resistance he faced. And in the west, he found that many Khmer leaders were still loyal to the king of Champa. They fought back against Jaya Vaman and managed to force him into a retreat. Bloodied and humiliated, he and his followers retreated to the mountain range in Cambodia, known as the Kulen, or Lichy Hill. Despite its beautiful name, this was a tough terrain, a range of stony hills overgrown with jungle, where creepers and roots clambered over the rocks. For a time, it must have seemed like all was lost.

But as he gathered the remains of his forces together, Jayavarman knew that it would take more than just military might to unite the Khmer peoples. He decided that what the people of Cambodia needed was not a warlord, but a king. He would crown himself something that had never before existed, the king of the Khmer. And to do this, he would have to devise an elaborate and mystical ceremony. The most valuable inscription concerning Jaya Vaman II is the one dated to the year 152, two centuries after his death. It's found at the temple of Sadoq Khaktoum in present-day Thailand. His Majesty, Jayavarman, came from Java to reign in the royal city of Indra Pura.

A Brahman, proficient in the law of magic power, came from Janapada in response to his majesty's invitation to perform a sublime rite which would release the kingdom from the tyranny of Java. This Hindu ceremony was known as the Devaraja, or the God-King ritual. What exactly was involved in the ritual isn't recorded. But from similar ceremonies in India, we can imagine perhaps an animal sacrifice, along with the burning of sacred kusha grass and incense, and the chanting of incantations in the ancient language of Sanskrit. But whatever it involved, we know the effect this ceremony had. By the time the ritual was finished, Jayavarman had established himself, not just as a king of the Khmer,

but as a kind of deity. And the symbolic power of this ritual seemed to work. When the remaining kingdoms of the Khmer heard that a god king had been crowned, their will to fight dissolved. Jayavarman was cunning. Through a smart program of military campaigns, alliances, marriages and land grants, he gradually gathered all the remaining kingdoms of the Khmer under his banner. He had achieved the unthinkable, a unification of Cambod. A unification of Cambodia that stretched from China to the north and bordered the old enemy of Champa to the east, the ocean to the south, and to the west, a place identified by one inscription as the land of cardamums and mangoes, which is likely Myanmar or eastern India. Once his conquest was complete, Jayavarman built a capital

at a place he called Hari Harralaya, and it would be a city suited for a god king. He built his palace, on high ground, and nearby dug a vast reservoir, marshalling enormous workforces to build embankments, drain swamps and dig ditches, and he even diverted the course of the Siamriap River to build his new capital. The ambition and scale of this project was vast and completely unprecedented in the region, and everything that was built for the new God King was designed to testify to that direct link that existed between him and the gods. In Hindu belief, the gods Shiva, Vishnu, and the rest of the pantheon live on a great mountain called Meru, similar to the idea of Mount Olympus in ancient Greek mythology.

Mount Meru is believed to be surrounded by a sea of milk, and when Jayavahavamun built his capital at Hariharalaya, he designed it to emulate this cosmic image. his palace on a hill overlooking the great reservoir. This building work must have been truly awe-inspiring for the people of the time. It set the tone for the ambition and scale that would mark the constructions of the Khmer, but it would be Jaya Vaman's successors that would transform his kingdom into a truly great empire, and the vast grandeur of their constructions would reach heights that even Jaya Vaman could never have imagined.

Before we go on, I'd like to paint a picture of the landscape over which this great drama will unfold. Fifty million years ago, the Indian tectonic plate collided with the erasian plate, forcing up the Himalayan mountain range into the highest peaks in the world, and creating the wide Tibetan plateau. This mountainous area, about five times the size of France, is sometimes called the Third Pole, since its tens of thousands of glaciers and lakes serve as a kind of water tower for the whole region. From this great plateau,

several of the world's longest rivers find their beginnings, including the Yangtze, the Indus, and the Mekong. The Mekong is the world's 12th longest river. From the Tibetan plateau, it wends for 4,300 kilometers, through China's Yunnan province and down through Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, finally branching out into a delta at the south coast of Vietnam. And this river is utterly teeming with life. Its ecosystem has a second highest rate of biodiversity in the world after only the Amazon River, containing freshwater dolphins, giant stingray,

soft-shell turtles and giant catfish. The Mekong River flows right through the center of Cambodia, and much of our story will take place on the shores of a vast freshwater lake called Tonle Sap, right in the middle of Cambodia. For most of the year, the lake drains its water into the Mekong River. But when the southwest monsoon season begins in June, the Mekong suddenly swells into a raging torrent, and the river that normally drains the lake suddenly reverses its flow, filling this body of water until it is a maximum length of 250 kilometres, with the width of 100 kilometres. In these months, the lake looks like an inland sea, stretching off into the horizon as far as the eye can see.

Today, the villages around the lake are famous for their houses perched on top of towering stilts, raising them 10 metres into the air or over three stories. That's because during the monsoon, the lake's water level rises from one meter deep to 10 times that amount. One Chinese visitor to ancient Angkor described this remarkable fluctuation, although he slightly exaggerates the height of the waters. The high water around the freshwater seas can reach some 24 metres. completely submerging even the very tall trees except for the tips. Families living by the shore all move to the far side of the hills.

But the challenges that the Great Lake presented to ancient people were offset by some incredible benefits. Tonle Sap has the highest concentration of freshwater fish in the world, thanks to the mineral-rich sediment carried into the lake by the annual floods. As well as fish from the lake, the Khmer people of this region cultivated rice. The rice we know was first domesticated in the Yangtze River Basin in China around 10,000 years ago, bred from marsh grasses that grew in flooded and swampy ground. Due to this, rice fields have to be constantly inundated with water for the crops to grow. Because of this need, the Khmer soon became experts,

in the control of water in the landscape. And this expertise would mean that the empire only just beginning on the shores of this lake would boom to immense size and grandeur. Every king who followed after Jaya Vaman II would follow his example in conducting the Hindu ritual of the Devaraja, to crown themselves as the god king of Cambodia. And this title was not just a metaphor. For much of Ankor's history, its king was both the wielder of executive power and the center of an opulent religious cult emanating from the great temples of its capital.

The Hindu religion, originating in India, had a long history in Southeast Asia, and Cambodia at this time was what's known as an Indianized kingdom. An ancient Khmer folk tale tells the story of how the lands of Khammeda folk tale tells the story of how the lands of Cambodia were founded. A long time ago, in the time of myths and legends, there was a prince of India named Kaun Dynia, who was descended from the god of the sun. One day, Kaundinja heard a mysterious voice calling out to him, telling him to set out on a journey to the land of gold, where he would become king. This was a dangerous journey by sea, following the monsoon winds and dangerous ocean currents, but he gathered his courage and set out.

Upon nearing the foreign coast of the land of gold, Kaundinya's ship was attacked by a fierce sea creature. It was a serpent woman with sharp fangs and a whipping tail. Her name was Nagy Soma, and she was the beautiful daughter of the serpent king. Kaundinia fought her, and after a long battle he emerged victorious. He spared the serpent woman's life, and she was impressed with his skill. She offered her hand in marriage. In celebration, Kaundinja hurled his golden lance at the coast, and where it landed, he resolved to build his royal city in the land of gold, which he gave the name,

Cambuja. This Khmer's story, like many legends of its kind, may have some grain of truth to it. The Cambuja that was founded with the throwing of that golden lance is of course the original name for Cambodia, and the story expresses how the Khmer culture traced their lineage back to India. At this time, the cultural impact of India in this region was immense. Great Indian superpowers like the Palava and Chola empires had already risen and fallen, spreading their culture across the whole area of Southeast Asia. Just as people all around the world today drink American sodas and fast food, so in ancient Asia, nations were slowly adopting the culture, religion, and customs of India.

The kingdoms of Southeast Asia adopted India's hierarchical social structure based on caste, its Hindu myths and philosophies, and perhaps most importantly, the language of Sanskrit. Sanskrit is a language that originated in North India. It was once a living language, but today it occupies a similar role to Latin in the European tradition. It's no longer spoken by ordinary people, but has become a language of scholarship and religion. And in the Western world, it is most commonly encountered in our yoga classes. You may think that this ancient Indian language is about as foreign to you as you could imagine, but that's not actually true. In fact, Sanskrit is part of the Indo-European family of languages,

the same family as our own English. This means that there are actually some Sanskrit words that you might recognize. For instance, the Sanskrit word for tooth is Danta. This shares a common ancestor with our English word dentist, which has passed through French, medieval, then ancient Latin, ancient Greek, and finally the theoretical language we call proto-Indo-European, which branched off around 5,000 years ago. At the time of the Khmer Empire's Flourishing, classical Sanskrit became the language used among the elite of Southeast Asia, just like Greek and Latin were once required learning among Europe's nobility. But it's important to note that while the elites, the wealthy, and the nobles of Angkor

were enraptured with Sanskrit and Hinduism, a great many of the common people of Cambodia were not Hindu. They were either Buddhist, or they followed their own ancient folk rituals that asked favours of the spirits who lived in the trees and the mountains. This division between the wealthy Hindu nobles and the different beliefs of the common people would form a stress line across Cambodian society. We will return to this fracture a number of times over this episode, as it causes ruptures and conflicts

and ultimately threatens to tear the entire empire apart. The Khmer king who would build the first great city at the site of Angkor was a man named Yashow Vaman. He was the son of a king named Indra Varmine. And perhaps you've already noticed something of a pattern with the names of these Cambodian kings. In fact, every king of the Khmer for the next 500 years would follow this convention, adopting a name that ended in Vaman, a Sanskrit word that means shield or armor. The name Jayavarman, for instance, means something like Victory Shield. When the old king Indravamun died, he left behind two sons.

One of these brothers was Yashovamun. His name means something like Glory Shield, and he was a vain and short-tempered prince. He was the eldest son, and he must have expected that one day he would sit on the throne that his father now occupied. But it seems that for whatever reason, Yashovarman was not his father's favorite. Instead, the old king named his younger brother the heir to the throne. Insulted and humiliated, Yashovarman flew into a rage. He immediately began to gather his armies and a bitter civil war erupted across the country. The fighting was vicious,

with armies clashing on the land and fleets of boats battling on the great land. Lake Tonle Sap, that beating heart of the Khmer world. Inscriptions of the time claim that Yashovarman was a fierce and competent commander, and he may well have been. But it's worth mentioning at this point that the kings of the Khmer had a great weakness for flattering themselves in their own inscriptions, and those written by Yashovarman are some of the worst offenders. A lion man, he tore the enemy with the claws of his grandeur. His teeth were his policies. His eyes were the Holy Scriptures. For obvious reasons, it's difficult to rely solely on the way these kings describe themselves in their own inscriptions. But I think each one does tell us something interesting. That is,

how these kings wish themselves to be seen. Lion man or not, we do know that our After much bitter fighting, Yasovamun finally defeated his younger brother and claimed the crown for himself. But Yasovarman was still clearly hurt by his father's decision. When he was finally crowned king, he refused to claim the throne through his father's line. Instead, he had his royal scribes concoct an elaborate new family tree that completely bypassed his father, just as his father had tried to bypass him. Yashow Varmine's mother was now the true royal one, descended from the ancient kings of that fallen empire of Chen Lahr. Despite this tendency for spite, Yashovarman seems to have been an effective ruler.

Although from the inscriptions he continued to commission, it's clear he never quite lost that original weakness for flattery. In all the sciences and all the sports, in the arts, the languages and the writings, in dancing, singing and all the rest. He was as clever as if he had been the first inventor of them. One area that we can be sure Yashovaman excelled in is construction. In just the first year of his reign, he built over 100 monasteries across the kingdom. He ruled for another 20 years, from 889 to his death in the year 9-10, and during this time he decided to build a new capital. susceptible as ever to flattery, he named this city after himself, calling it Yashudapura. But today we know it by the name Ankhore.

We may never know why Yashovarman had such a mania for construction, but one legend suggests a possible explanation for why this king wanted so desperately to leave his mark on the world. In some traditions, Yashovaman went by another name. the leper king. Leprosy is caused by a bacterial infection that can remain dormant in the body for up to 20 years before showing its symptoms. It was one of the most feared diseases right across the ancient world, since it rendered horrible deformities and skin lesions to its sufferers. And it's not unknown in history for a king to contract leprosy. A 12th century king of Jerusalem, known as Baldwin

in the 4th, ruled for 10 years while suffering from the disease. And modern bone analysis has shown that the Scottish king Robert the Bruce also suffered from it. Today, a melancholy monument in the northwest corner of one royal square in Angkor has become a kind of shrine to Yasovarman. That's because of a statue there that depicts the Hindu god Yama, the god of death and lord of the underworld. This statue is eaten away by moss and discoloured by rain, and its patchy stone has given rise to a legend that it depicts the harrowed flesh of the leper king Yashovarman. We can never know how much truth there is to this legend.

But if you'll allow me just a moment of imagination, I do wonder whether this explains the absolute drive of this king to build these vast and stunningly beautiful palaces beside the Great Lake. that as his flesh decayed around him and he felt the certainty of his death draw closer, he felt an ever greater need to make his mark on the world, a mark that would last long after his body had finally given in to his disease, and that would leave his name forever stamped on these crumbling stones. But again, we can never say for sure. From the foundations laid by the leper king Yashouvarman,

Ancourt's empire grew and flourished until it was the most powerful in Southeast Asia. There were a number of factors behind this great success story. The first of these was the ruler's status as God king. This cemented his royal authority, and it allowed the peasants of Angkor to see service to their king as a kind of religious devotion. The second was the empire's efficient and decentralized tax system, and this also relied on the close ties between the God King and his religious establishment. Each village in the Khmer Empire had its own temple, and this temple wasn't just a religious building, it was also an administrative center. Each temple was run by a powerful family in the area, who were responsible for collecting taxes

from the people who lived there. They would use these taxes to support the functioning of their own lands, paying their laborers and soldiers, and supporting their own luxurious lifestyles, but anything left over would then be funneled back to the Royal Treasury in Angkor. The status of these families depended on how much money they could send to the king, and so they competed bitterly to swell the royal funds. This simple but effective system led to a swift,

expansion of the empire's economic capacity. The elites who ran the village temples worked as fast as they could to expand their taxable lands, and cut down as many trees as they could to make way for new farmlands, which soon covered the vast area of Cambodia's highly fertile central lowlands. And the final factor in the Khmer's success was their ingenuity in the management of water. In its early history, the enormous lake and the floodplains around Angkor allowed its people to conduct multiple rice harvests throughout the year. But as Angkor grew into a true city, strain on this agricultural system increased. To deal with the increased demand of the population, Anchor's people developed an ingenious system of water control that turned their capital

into what is known as a hydraulic city. If you were able to soar like a bird over ancient anchor, you would see the whole land below you, etched out in remarkably regular lines, like the marks on a circuit board. These lines would flash in the sun as you passed over them. They are canals and inlets, that allow water to flow around the whole city, inundating its fields in a vast, interconnected circulatory system. They built complex junctions into their waterways, using canals with multiple bends in them when they wanted a slow, steady flow of water, and long, straight canals when they wanted a fast and direct flow into the reservoirs. I'll post some maps of this intricate system upon Patreon for you to appreciate its true complexity.

As water drains from the Kulin Hills in the north, the engineers of Angkor channeled it into two enormous reservoirs, known as Barais. These were the largest human constructions built until the modern industrial era. The so-called West Barai measures roughly 8 by 2 kilometers, or the size of 2,000 football pitches, while the East Barai is only a little smaller. The ancient engineers didn't dig the earth out. They built up instead, heaping up enormous mounds of earth into banks, and then diverting rivers and canals to fill them. These enormous banks could be as much as 100 metres wide and 10 metres tall, containing 8 million cubic metres of earth. Today, the West Barai is still an enormous lake,

but the East Barai contains no water. Farmers grow their crops on what was once its lakebed. But its outlines remain clearly visible in the landscape. and together these barais make Ankur one of the human constructions most readily visible from outer space. These vast reservoirs served a dual purpose. They acted as overflow tanks in the monsoon season, preventing the rice fields from flooding in an uncontrolled way. But they also allowed the Khmer to store water through the dry season when the rain didn't fall. Through the dry months, a Khmer could drain as much water from the romew of the rye. reservoirs as they needed, diverting it through their complicated system of channels into their

fields, possibly using wooden lock gates to give greater control over the direction of the water. Ancourt's water machinery is so vast and complex that many of its components are still a mystery to us. But thanks to this system, rice could now be harvested all year round. One Chinese visitor to the ancient Khmer Empire, writing in the 14th century, described the effectiveness of this system. For six months, the land has no rain at all. In general, crops can be harvested three or four times a year. This huge agricultural potential allowed the city of Angkor to boom to unprecedented size. While London had a population of less than 20,000 people in the 12th century, central Angkor may have contained as many as a quarter of a million, which is 40 times larger.

Like a modern city, it was divided into a grid of regular city blocks. A traveller or pilgrim arriving at Angkor during the rainy season might have sheltered beneath the canopy of a roadside rest stop and warmed their hands by the fire, heard the chanting of monks in the temples nearby, the sound of bells and the smells of incense and animals. They might have crossed a bridge wide and strong enough to hold the king's elephants and seen the green water of the reservoirs rushing beneath them. Today our cities are made up of dense residential, commercial and administrative buildings. We've banished our farmland to the countryside, outside the city limits. But in Angkor, every available plot of land would have been given over

to farmland, which shared space with temples and palaces. The whole city would have had the feel of an enormous village, or thousands of villages bleeding into one another. So these are the three main strengths, the three pillars that allowed the Khmer Empire to boom to such enormous size. Firstly, they had a powerful central authority in the king, who was also worshipped as a god. Secondly, they had an effective tax system that incentivised growth and competition among regions. And finally, they were experts at managing water in a way that got the maximum amount of food out of the landscape. These three pillars supported a system that would allow the Khmer to build and flourish for over 400 years. but for a number of reasons, this period of flourishing wouldn't last.

That's because for each of Ankur's strengths, it had a weakness. Each of these three pillars contained a fatal crack. Firstly, while its king was powerful, his power depended on his status as a god king. This meant that the Hindu belief of Ankhore's people had to be maintained and any shift in religion could undermine the entire system of royal power. Secondly, while Ankhore's tax system incentivized growth, it also encouraged over-exploitation of the land, resentment among the exhausted and over-taxed peasants, and environmental damage in the form of deforestation. And finally, the Khmer's greatest strength, their incredible skill at water management, also had the

potential to become their greatest weakness. The vast water network that laced the city of Angkor and the whole of Cambodia at this time would have required a huge amount of resources and labour-intensive maintenance. It needed constant effort to repair damaged banks and inlets and to clear the canals of the silt that was always building up at their bottoms, washed down from the hills. Ancourt's water system was so complex and interdependent that under a sufficient stress, a single failure could cause a cascade effect, rippling throughout the whole network and bringing the world's largest city to its knees.

All of these factors would come into play as the Khmer Empire reached its height, and these three pillars came under increasing stress. As so often happens throughout history, the rise of one empire begins with the fall of another. To the north of the Khmer Kingdom, China's Tang Dynasty had presided over a golden age that lasted nearly 300 years. It was a flourishing time of arts and culture, when prosperity was widespread and trade boomed. But around the time of King Yashovamun, the Tang Dynasty was entering into a nosedive. Huge armies of bandits now ravaged China's countryside and sacked it. cities, smuggling salt and ambushing merchants. Finally, emperors were assassinated and palace coups

led to the disintegration of the entire Tang dynasty. Now five different dynasties fought over who would rule China, and meanwhile southern China fractured into ten warring states. This period of chaos in China would provide an opportunity for an ambitious young empire like the Khmer. Kings like Indravaman and Yashovarman now had a free hand to expand their territory inland, and the anarchy in China meant that merchants and traders would look to the golden towers of Angkor to provide security on the roads. By the 12th century, the Khmer had come to totally dominate the lands of Southeast Asia, and the magnificence of their architectural works were a testament to the glory that their empire had achieved. The most famous of all of all the world of the world,

All Khmer monuments today is Ankur Wat. By some estimations, it is the largest religious structure ever built, four times larger than the Vatican City in Rome. Ankhawat was built out of perhaps as many as 10 million sandstone blocks, each weighing up to 1.5 tons. The stone was quarried from the sacred Kulin Hills 40 kilometers to the north, cut out of bedrock by teams of workers using iron tools, and the blocks were then floated down to the lowlands on barges that traversed the wide canals. The amount of building material used to construct

Angkor Wat is greater than the great pyramid of Kufu at Giza. And if the entire city of Angkor is taken into account, more stone was used in its construction than in all the pyramids of Egypt put together. Ankor's blocks of sandstone are held together without mortar, shaped so perfectly that the gaps between the stones are often invisible. Like most of the Khmer's Hindu temples, Angkor Wat is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the gods. Its five-kilometer moat encloses three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next, and its five towers are designed to look like lotus buds. about to bloom. When the French explorer Henri Mujo was shown the ruins of Angkor Wat in the

19th century, now overgrown and clutched in the embrace of huge banyan and silk cotton trees, he wrote back to the French colonial authorities about what he saw. One of these temples, arrival to that of Solomon and erected by some ancient Michelangelo, might take an honorable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome. And the ingenuity of the people who built this temple can't be overstated. The medieval Khmer built Angkor Wat in just under 37 years, while at the same time the Normans took centuries to build their own cathedrals. Angkor Wat was built by the Khmer king Suyavaman II. in the early 12th century.

He had a passion for architecture that would turn his capital into one of the world's wonders. But, rather unfortunately, both for himself and the kingdom, Suyavaman also had an insatiable appetite for warfare. And unlike some of his predecessors, he showed absolutely no skill in it whatsoever. A low-relief carving in the South Gallery of Ankur Wat shows King Suyavaman as he would like to be seen, as a mighty warrior riding into battle on the back of an elephant. I'll post this image upon Patreon for you to see. He looks the perfect image of a Khmer warrior, his chest covered with armor, a sharp weapon in his right hand, and hordes of foot soldiers below,

armed with spears and shields. But the reality was quite different. It's true that Suyavaman liked to his men into battle, and he did so on many occasions. Throughout his reign, he had set his sights on the two coastal nations that made up the area of what is today Vietnam. One of these we've looked at already, the land of Champa, who had once ruled over the disparate Khmer kingdoms of Cambodia before being expelled by Jaiyavaman II. While the Khmer were an inland people, the Chalm were seagoers, mariners and traders. One low-relief carving at the Angkorian temple called the Bayon shows Cham's sailors fighting against the Khmer, sailing in long rowing boats with dragon-headed prows and umbrellas overhead to shade them from the sun. I'll put this image up on Patreon too.

To the north of Champa was a kingdom called Dai Viet, home of the Viet people who give their name to the modern country of Vietnam. Vietnam in those times was divided between these two kingdoms, Champa and Dai Viet. And interestingly, the border between them was close to the same line that split the country during the Vietnam War, famously separating north and south along the 17th parallel. King Suyavaman was determined to conquer these ancient coastal kingdoms and take advantage of the rich traffic of trade that passed down their coastlines from China. He embarked on three separate invasions of Vietnam, each of them resulting in failure. In the year 1128, for instance, he led a huge army of 20,000 soldiers against the Viet people, but his great army was decisively defeated, and the

king only just made it back to Angkor alive. Not to be deterred, Suyavarman tried again in the year 1145, this time invading Champa, and he had slightly better luck. He managed to defeat its king and sacked its capital of Vijaya. But as the Americans found out in the 20th century, Vietnam is a difficult country to hold. The puppet king that Suyovamen installed lasted only about five years. He was ousted by Cham rebellions, and when Suyavarman marched back into Champa to support him, his army was badly beaten by the rebels. Although the inscriptions are understandably quiet on the subject, it's thought that Suyovarman himself may have died on this expedition, but whether from disease, a failed battle, or an enemy ambush is unclear. All of this warring for little benefit

must have drained the coffers of the Khmer state and caused great instability and resentment within the kingdom. And, perhaps most devastatingly of all, Suyovarman, died without a clear air. Civil wars were a constant problem in medieval Cambodia. Of all the 27 rulers of Angkor, only 16 ever had a legitimate claim to power. After Suyovaman died, one of his cousins seized the throne and a bitter period of fighting began. Now increasingly inept rulers vied for control of the weakened Khmer state, and it was a merely all of this that the great temple of Ankhawat was finally completed, years after Suyavaman died. Today, its architectural magnificence has cemented his place in history as one of Cambodia's great kings,

but it's a reputation that perhaps he didn't entirely deserve. Civil wars, rebellions, and foreign invasions further weakened the Khmer state over the next 30 years, until it began to seem like its collapse was imminent. But in the year 1120, a prince was born who would change its fortunes for the better, a man who would be remembered as the greatest of all Khmer kings, and the incredible story of his rise to power should tell you just a little about what kind of man he was. This prince was called Jayavarman, a popular name for Khmer princes, much as Henry was for English royalty. since Jaya Vaman I founded the empire and crowned himself the first god king, there had been a further four king Jayavahans.

But despite this common name, there was something very unusual about this Jayavaman. Unlike previous Hindu princes of Angkor, he was a devout Buddhist. From the various sculptures that depict him, we get an impression of Jayavaman as a man with a broad, strong body. and a large head covered with close-cropped hair. His eyes are always closed in the statues, a half-smile of peaceful contemplation on his lips, but his broad jaw is also set in an expression of fierce determination. This prince Jayavarman was the heir to the throne of Angkor. When his father died in the year 1160, Jayavarman, at the age of 40, prepared to ascend the throne. But before he could, a rival brother made a competing claim to the crown, as so often happened

in Cambodian society. This was a clear declaration of civil war. But Jaivaman's Buddhist faith forbade him from shedding blood, and to shed the blood of a brother was even more unthinkable to him. And so instead of fighting, he gave up the crown and went into voluntary exile in the land of Champa, the traditional enemy of the Khmer in southern Vietnam. He would remain there for five years, watching from afar as his home kingdom descended into chaos. That's because Jayavarman's treacherous brother turned out to be a poor sort of king. He mismanaged the country, suffered from

rebellions, and soon faced a violent revolt from a bold rebel leader named Tribulvanaditia, Astonishingly, Gayavarman seems to have forgiven his brother for betraying him. When he heard he was in danger, Jayavarman rushed out of exile to stand by his brother's side. But he was too late. By the time he arrived back in the capital of Angkor, he found his brother dead, and the rebel chief Tribul Vanaditia sitting on the throne. Once again, Jayavahvon's religion prevented him from fighting. and so he fled back to his exile in Champa to mourn the brother who had betrayed him.

But the rebel chief Tribuvanaditia would have just as much luck as Jaya Vaman's brother. He ruled for ten years, but he was belligerent and difficult. He too faced rebellions, and soon his insulting manner drove the kingdom of Champa to invade. Jaya Vaman, in his exile, must have watched the Chamban. armies leaving for war. The divisions of spearmen with their bright shields, the trumpeting of the war elephants, the long ships driven by oarsmen leaving the port of Vajaya. By this time, the Khmer Empire had been weakened by decades of internal fighting. The Cham armies were able to rampage through the Khmer lands and easily defeat its army in battle. But the rebel king Tribu Vanadija

still felt secure, holed up in the great capital of Angkor behind its ring of tall walls. That was, until the true strength of the Cham people came into its own. Their experience as maritime traders meant that the Cham were skilled sailors. They amassed a great fleet and sailed it up the Mekong River, across the Lake Tonle Sap and directly into the heart of the Khmer capital. It was a great fleet, a daring surprise attack. And when the rebel king saw those ships with their dragon-headed prows and bright umbrellas massing on the lake in their hundreds, he must have known that all was lost. The Cham Army burned the city of Angkor to the ground. They destroyed its temples and palaces and set fire to the wooden houses of its people, leaving it a smoking and desolate waste.

They executed the rebel chief Tribu Vanaditia, and anarchy descended upon the lands of the Khmer. Still in exile in the kingdom of Champa, and now an old man of over 50 years, the exiled Prince Jayavarman heard about what had happened with what must have been a heavy heart. He knew that he had to return home to help his people. When he crossed the border, he must have ridden through a devastating. land, full of burned villages and hungry people. But his moment of destiny had finally arrived. He returned to the capital city he had fled so many years ago, and the people there greeted him as their king, crowning him Jayavarman the 7th. And so the pacifist Jayavarman became the king of

Angkor in the year 1181, without ever having shed a drop of blood. But as he sat down, he sat On the throne in the capital, Jayavaman could still smell the smoke in the air. Angkor's buildings were burned and the bodies of its people still lay in the streets. The armies of Champa still rampaged through his land, burning villages and terrorizing his people who now looked to him for protection. And perhaps it was this newfound responsibility that brought Jayavaman's Buddhist pacifism to an end. He ordered a great army to be gathered and marched out to meet the rampaging invaders on the battlefield. He was successful and scored victory after victory as he drove the invaders from his

lands. Once the Chalm armies were expelled, Jayavarman I rode back to Champa, this time not as a broken exile but at the head of an army. He took revenge on the Chamb people for the destruction of Angkor, their capital in turn and dethroning their king. Cham finally became a part of the Khmer Empire, which was now wider and broader than it had ever been in history. But when Jayavarman returned to his capital, he found it still in a state of great destruction. Its wooden houses were burnt, its gilded temples robbed,

and its once opulent palace lying in ash and ruin. And so he embarked on a building project. that would have few equals in history and would turn the capital of the Khmer Empire into the envy of the world. Jayavarman rebuilt the city in a single burst of vast constructive energy, and this part of Angkor is known today as Angkor Tom, or the Great City. Jayavarman's new city was a perfect square of mathematical precision, surrounded by a moat three kilometers long on either side and enclosing an area of nine square kilometers. You really have to see aerial photographs to get a sense of the engineering

marvel that this city represents, and I'll post some of these on Twitter and Patreon for you to see. Jayavaman I poured all of his energy into the construction of this new capital, and one inscription found in the city even refers to Jayavarman as a groom, while the new city of Ankhortem is his bride. carvings in the Bayon Temple in Ankhortom give us a glimpse of the frenzy of construction that went on here. The city must have been wrapped in bamboo scaffolding as far as the eye could see, with the sounds of hammers and chisels napping away at the stones,

the huffing of work elephants carrying their loads of stone through the streets and workers heaving on ropes. Jayavarman undertook a vast public work program too, building roads that connected every one of Cambodia's towns. The building project swelled the population of Angkor and supercharged the kingdom's economic growth. But Jayavaman would be significant for one other reason. He was not the first Buddhist king of Cambodia, but he was the first to declare Buddhism, the state religion. And from the moment of his coronation, he embarked on a program to convert Angkor's society from their Indianized Hindu culture.

Before the year 1200, art in the temples of Angkor mostly portrayed scenes from the Hindu pantheon, such as Vishnu reclining on a lotus leaf or the churning of the primeval sea of milk in Hindu creation stories. After the year 1200, scenes from the Buddhist folk tales called the Jatakas, and scenes from the life of the Buddha began to appear on the temples instead. The great temple of Ancourwat was slowly transformed into a center of worship, not for the Hindu god Vishnu as it was designed, but for the Buddha. It amounted to a non-violent revolution that pervaded every level of Khmer society. Buddhism had always been a part of medieval Cambodia.

As we've already seen, it was popular among commoners. but it had virtually no traction among the lords and nobles of high society who were devoted to Hinduism and the Indian way of life. You can think of Buddhism in Cambodia as something like Christianity during the first and second centuries in the Roman Empire. When a liberal and tolerant ruler held power, its followers could go about more or less unmolested, but it took only one tyrant for things to get unpleasant. But now, just as Christianity had in Rome, Buddhists began to take over the culture that had once persecuted them. Buddhism succeeded in Cambodia because it was inclusive and universal in its outreach. It recruited its disciples and monks not only from the nobles and royal court, but also from the villages and among the peasants.

This inclusiveness was also reflected in its architecture. King Jayavarman I've been 7th had an enormous temple built in Ankhortom called the Bayon. In line with Buddhist ideals, it was the first temple in Cambodia to be built without any walls, indicating its openness to all of Ancourt's people. But the kingdom's conversion to Buddhism would have wide-reaching consequences that Jaya Vaman may not have anticipated. As a Buddhist, he announced the title of God King, instead giving himself the humble title, the Lord who looks down. But he still retained religious authority in the kingdom

and presided over the construction of temples and image houses. This was possible because Jaivaman was a Mahayana Buddhist, a branch of Buddhism that was highly malleable and adaptive. As it spread north out of India, into Cambodia, Tibet and China, Mahayana Buddhism took on local customs and beliefs wherever it went. so it was no problem for Jayavaman to retain the traditional religious power of the god kings who had come before him. But in the century that followed Jayavaman's rule, the state religion would change multiple times, depending on the varying beliefs of the ruler. The Khmer Empire would be Buddhist for one king's reign

and then return to the Hindu god kings for another. And this inconsistency seems to have led to a widespread collapse in the trust that the Khmer people put in their state religion. The common people must have asked themselves, well, is the king a god or isn't he? Into this vacuum of trust swept a new religion. It was a hard-line branch of Buddhism called Terravada, which held much closer to the way Buddhism was originally taught in its homeland of India. Terravada Buddhism is austere and uncompromising. its monks live in poverty, forbidden from even touching money. They wandered between villages on pilgrimage and lived only on what the people gave them to eat. For centuries now, Khmer society had been a picture of inequality.

Kammer peasants paid punishing taxes to the temples, did backbreaking labor in the fields, and could be conscripted into vast work gangs whenever a new temple, reservoir or royal mausoleum was built. It's estimated that the construction of the great reservoir of the West Burai, for instance, would have taken the work of 200,000 peasants working for three years. Meanwhile, the king and his nobles, as well as the priests and holy men in the temples, lived in luxury. The king's palace required the services of up to 4,000 palace women, for instance, while according to the inscriptions at just one medium-sized temple, it required a staff of a thousand administrators, 600 dancers, 95 professors, and a whole host of other staff,

amounting to nearly 13,000 people, and all of this opulence came at the expense of the peasants. But all this promised to come to an end with the spread of Tehravada Buddhism. This new breed of Buddhist priests lived in grass huts among the villages rather than in golden temples. It's not hard to see how this new religion became so popular among Cambodia's people, and how dangerous it would soon become for the authority of the crown. By the year 1295, only 70 years after Jaya Vaman the 7th's death, the spread of Theravada Buddhism meant that the king was no longer considered to have any religious authority. The reign of the god kings had come to an end, and for the rulers of the

empire that followed, this would spell disaster. When Jayavaman I died in the year 1220, he would have been close to 100 years old. The morning must have been tremendous. The pipes and conches, the drums and gongs and flutes that sounded at his funeral, would have been audible from great distance. The people of Angkor were mourning for their greatest king, but they may as well have been mourning for their whole empire. That's because after the reign of Jayavaman, the whole of Khmer society would enter into a steady but unstoppable freefall. From this point on, all monumental religious building projects in Angkor came to an end. Soon, virtually all building projects ground to a halt, and over the next hundred years, the creation of stone inscriptions in the capital would slow

until they eventually disappeared forever. Frustratingly for historians, these stone inscriptions were more or less the only source about what was going on in this kingdom at the time. With their ancient alphabet, the Khmer kept many books of their own, but these texts were written on strips of dried palm leaf. which are very delicate and perishable. They had to be recopied every hundred years or so if they were to survive, and for this reason not a single Angkorian text has survived to this day. We have only their inscriptions in the stone to learn from, and with the end of stone construction

in Angkor, we're left guessing as to what exactly happened in those years. The last recorded king of Angkor was Gaya Vaman the 9th, who reigned for nearly a decade, from 1327 to 1336, when he was supposedly killed by his head gardener, who married his daughter and took his place on the throne. After this, there are no more records. For the next 200 years, not even the name of one king has survived. This period is known as the Dark Ages of Cambodia, and the next thing we hear about the city of Angkor is the report of those Portuguese-exploved. who opened this episode, stumbling across the ruins of the city deep in the jungle. But what happened in those dark 200 years when the Cambodian inscriptions came to a stop? What fate befell this great

empire that had once been one of the world's mightiest powers? And how did the world's largest city turn into nothing more than a string of scattered ruins? In the year 1296, the Mongol Emperor Timur Khan, who sat on the dragon throne of China, sent an ambassador to their southern neighbor, the Khmer Empire. One member of this mission was a man named Joddha Kwan, who spent a year in Angkor. When he returned to China, Zhou T'quan wrote a long report for the emperor on what he had seen of the society and culture of Cambodia. This document has survived to this day, and it forms one of the most crucial pieces of testimony about what life was like in medieval anchor towards its end. Shaw was particularly struck by the architecture of the Khmer capital.

All official buildings and homes of the aristocracy, including the Royal Palace, face the east. The Royal Palace stands north of the Golden Tower and the bridge of gold. It is one and a half mile in circumference. Other dwellings are covered with yellow-colored pottery tiles. Carved or painted Buddhas decorate all the immense columns and lintels. The roofs are impressive too. Open corridors and long colonnats are ranged in harmonious patterns, stretch away on all sides.

Shōutokan also noticed the large numbers of Taravada Buddhist monks walking the streets. After nearly a century of growing influence, the Khmer King Indravaman III had finally made the austere religion of Taravada, the official state religion. But despite this, it seems that the pomp and magnificence of the Khmer kings hadn't dimmed in the slightest. When the king goes out, croups march at the head of his escort. Then, comflax, banners, and music. Palace women, three to five hundred of them, wearing flowered cloth with flowers in their hair, hold candles in their hands, bearing royal treasure of gold and silver. Cards drawn by goats and horses, all in gold, come next. Behind them comes the sovereign, standing on an elephant, holding his sacred

sword in his hand. notes that despite the most austere form of Buddhism taking over the country, the inequalities of Cambodian society were still rife. Only the ruler can dress in cloth with an all-over floral design. Around his neck he wears about three pounds of big perils. At wrists, ankles and fingers he has gold bracelets and rings all set with cut's eyes. Meanwhile, the common people dressed plainly. From the king down, the men and women all wear their hair wound up in top knots, and go naked to the waist, wrapped only in a cloth.

But alongside this remaining royal extravagance, there were signs of extreme stress already beginning to show beneath the surface of Angkor's society. By this time, the golden age of the Khmer was passed. Jayavaman the 7th had been dead for almost a hundred years, and it's clear that the empire had begun to slide into decline. Part of the reason for this was due to the rise of powerful enemies in the region. Both the Vietnamese and Thai people had grown in strength and confidence around this time and were beginning to put pressure on the Khmer lands. Shota Kwan mentions this at one point in his testimony.

war with the Siamese, the country was utterly devastated. These Siamese were the kingdom of Ayutaya, in what is now known as Thailand. Ayutaya was once part of the Khmer Empire, but it had broken free in recent centuries. Now it was a rising power in the region, a trading kingdom with a vast port capital that swelled with the wealth of trade in the Gulf of Thailand. When early French explorers visited Ayutaya, they would compare it to Paris in terms of its size and wealth. And by this time, the Thai were beginning to exert influence in the region, conquering northern kingdoms and city states. And by the year 1350, Ayutaya had gained enough confidence to start challenging the great power of the region in open battle. From this point on, for a period of a hundred

years or so, wars between the Thai and the Khmer were incessant and mostly one-sided. The Khmer lost several large and profitable territories on their borders, which weakened them and further reduced their ability to defend themselves. And as the mid-14th century neared, the Thai people felt bold enough to invade the Khmer heartland and take a swipe at the great capital itself. In 1352, the Thai king Uthong marched a great army into Cambodia and encircled the city of Angkor. While Angkor was large and had sections surrounded by strong walls, it was not a defensible stronghold. It sits in the west of Cambodia, and while attacks were mostly coming from Champa and Dai Viet in the east, this was in a strong position. but now attacks were coming from the west, and Angkor began to look increasingly vulnerable.

The very features that made Angkor perfect for rice farming, its wide, flat plains, made it a difficult city to defend in times of war. Some historians have also argued that the extensive system of roads built by Geyovarman the 7th, which had boosted the empire's economy for over 100 years, would now work against it. On these well-maintained roads, its enemies could now march across Cambodia at great speed, and since the road network was so dispersed, the only defensible choke point in the country was at the gates of the city. And by the time the enemy had reached there, it would have been too late.

King Uthong's siege succeeded. The walls of Angkor fell, its defenders were overcome, and the Thai soldiers were overcome. and the Thai soldiers swept into the city and toppled its king. For a period, Ankur was ruled by a series of puppet kings loyal to the Thai. But the Khmer, as always, were a proud people and refused to accept foreign rule. They rebelled again and again, with a Khmer king finally retaking the throne. This was until the final siege of Angkor in the year 1431. The final siege lasted for seven months, and the Khmer resistance must have been terrific.

But the Thai armies completely encircled Angkor, cutting off its supplies on the land and blocking the canals. We can imagine the drums of war beating and the trumpeting of the elephants, the smoke rising from the siege camps as the city of Angkor was slowly throttled of life. After seven long months the city surrendered, and the Thai forces sacked it completely, looting it of all its valuables. Statues from Angkor have been found decorating the ancient Thai capital of Ayutaya, suggesting an organized campaign to loot and despoil the city that was once the Rome of this region. The Thai conquerors put one of their own princes on the throne of Angkor,

but they never conquered the whole land of Cambodia. Once again, the usurper sat on the throne for only a short time before a Khmer prince chased him away and reclaimed the crown. But after this humiliation, it was clear that Khmer kings could no longer rule from the great city of Angkor. They moved the king and his court south to a more defensible location, around where Phnom Penh, the modern Cambodian capital, is today. day. It was the end of the great golden era of the Khmer Empire, and for the city of Angkor,

it was the first step in its gradual but inescapable collapse. It's worth noting at this point that Angkor had recovered from the destruction of war in the past. In fact, some of its greatest architectural achievements had risen out of the ashes of destruction, such as Angkor Tom in the time of Jayavaman the 7th. And this shift of administrative power to the south doesn't seem to explain the wholesale abandonment of the entire city. So what happened? Many explanations have been given for the abandonment of Angkor. Some historians have argued that only a cataclysm, like a great earthquake or the arrival of bubonic plague, can account for the disappearance of such a vast population.

But because of the scarcity of inscriptions through the Cambodian Dark Ages, we're left with only the archaeological record to go by. And recent evidence suggests that Angkor's decline was not a thunder clap. It didn't happen all at once, and there was little evidence of a mass die-off of people. New scientific evidence shows that the intensity of land use in the center of the city had declined gradually for more than 100 years before its supposed collapse. Analysis of sediment cores shows that in the first decades of the 14th century, tree growth increased in the region, while signs of soil erosion and burning all declined,

pointing to a reduction in human activity. By the end of the 14th century, Ankhore's moat was covered in a floating mat of swamp vegetation, indicating, that it was no longer being maintained. And as with the collapse of many civilizations we've looked at already, it seems that climate was to play a large part in the demise of Angkor. Recent research by Australian archaeologists suggests that the decline may have been caused, at least in part, by the global transition from the medieval warm period to the Little Ice Age. A shift that we saw in the previous episode had devastating effects for the Vikings of Greenland. But in Cambodia, with the complex mechanics of its monsoon season, this period

of climate change seems to have had somewhat contradictory effects. If we look at the enormous canals to the south of Angkor, we see that around this time they became filled with a large amount of coarse-grained sand. This suggests a period of torrential rainfall and flooding, during which silt deposits were swept down from the hills in large amounts. But around the same time, the exit channels that usually drained water from the large reservoirs were deliberately blocked, while others were turned into inlets to increase the water flowing into the lakes. This all seems to indicate a period of drought, when the citizens were fighting to keep the reservoir levels high. So which was it?

or floods. This apparent paradox has puzzled archaeologists for many years, but an answer came in the recent publication of a study into the widths of tree rings in Cambodia covering a period of nearly a thousand years. Tree rings are wider in periods of heavy rainfall and thinner in years of low rainfall. This study shows that after the year 1350, monsoon rainfall in Southeast Asia became incredibly variable. Between the years 1330 and 1375, a 25-year period of severe droughts occurred, and this happened again between 1,400 and 1425. Between these extreme dry periods, the rains fell in a deluge.

The period from the mid-14th to the mid-15th century contains an astonishing number of both the wettest and the driest years of the last millennium, and this would spell doom for the city of Angkor. The Khmer were well prepared for droughts that lasted one or two years, but a nearly 30-year drought would have caused immense damage to this primarily agricultural economy, and the people must have decided that their water system needed. to adapt. They hurriedly built emergency canals, running from the hills directly to the city, long and straight so that more water could flow into the reservoirs and fields. They might have celebrated, having solved the problem as they had learned to do over the centuries. But when the

drought came to an end, the rains that year were a deluge of unexpected force and volume. There would have been little time to react before the water rushed down from the hills and the entire system was overwhelmed. The emergency inlets that had increased water flow during the drought would now become the city's downfall. Water would rush down them in greater volumes than the city was designed to withstand and the reservoir would fill to bursting. The Khmer may have made some attempts to drain their tanks, desperately digging emergency outlets and trying to block the canals they had built only years before, but it would do no good. The reservoirs began to overflow. It must have been a terrifying sight as the water began to pour down the sides of the banks,

flooding into the city, turning streets into rivers and sweeping away the fragile wooden houses in a torrential flood of water. The people of Angkor would once again work to re-engineer their enormous water system back to its previous state. They blocked the new inlet canals and widened the outlets to drain the reservoir, and just when they had finished, the drought would return,

and the whole cycle would begin again. This repeated cycle of severe drought and flooding seems to have been a stress that Angkor's water system simply wasn't versatile enough to withstand, and it led to a series of cascading failures. A cascading failure can occur in any system of interconnected parts when one part of the system fails. Other pieces of the system must now compensate, and this in turn overloads them. Nodes throughout the system fail one after another until the whole infrastructure grinds to a halt.

One bridge leading into the temple complex of Ancourtem tells a chilling story of what must have happened during that time. The first thing we notice is that this bridge appears to have been hastily constructed, with none of the refinement of the nearby constructions. And when we look closer, we see that it was built out of building material recycled from nearby temples. Some of its stones show the intricate carvings of a temple wall, but mismatched and jumbled in this new structure.

The fact that the Khmer people had to hastily build this bridge shows that something had gone terribly wrong with their water control system, and the fact that they had to reuse stones from their most sacred and revered buildings shows that the situation was desperate. Judging by the damage done to the bridge, efforts to control the floodwaters were unsuccessful. In the end, the river that was supposed to run, under it, carved away around the bridge, and its eastern end collapsed. But one question remains,

did the people of Angkor leave because the infrastructure failed, or did the infrastructure fail because people had already left? We may never know the answer to this question, but I would argue that a feedback loop exists between these two factors. A vicious cycle came into play as Angkor diminished in relevance. As this happened, fewer resources were spent maintaining its vast and complex water system, and the cycle of drought and flooding finally broke it completely. As larger parts of the city flooded, sewage and sanitation systems such as they existed would have failed, and diseases like dysentery and cholera would have spread among the flooded streets. As water in some areas stopped flowing and became stagnant, mosquito populations may have thrived in

the still pools, and cases of malaria would have increased. As has happened with other dying cities around the world, words may have got around that the city was cursed, that devils live there that caused disease, and now ever fewer resources would be spent maintaining the water systems of a dying city. The enormous amount of maintenance required in the water system meant that Angkor essentially had a minimum possible population. Below the certain number of people required to maintain it, the system would have failed utterly. The city would have flooded permanently and life there would have become unlivable. Now only monkeys would clamber among the temple roofs and the jungle would amass outside the city walls like

an invading army, ready to reclaim its streets and palaces. Soon saplings, shrubs and wild grasses would burst through the once-opulent streets. Since few valuables or artifacts have ever been uncovered in Angkor, it's likely that looters scoured the ruins too, stripping them of anything of value. Most buildings in Angkor were wooden and thatched with palm leaf. As the first years and decades passed, these disintegrated quickly and left few traces, but the stone buildings remained. Someone entering the city of Angkor in the later half of the 15th century, a scavenger or a fisherman on his way to the Great Lake, would likely have found streets still flooded by the bursting of the city's waterworks, now overgrown with lilies and lotuses, and covered by the shade of the

jungle canopy. The writer Malcolm MacDonald described the eerie quiet of these ruins after his visits in the 1950s. Daylight is filtered through many thicknesses of green foliage and has a mysterious, eerie quality. It is half light and half darkness, a greenish twilight, a lifeless, haunted sort of illumination such as might glimmer in a ghostly underworld. Those stone buildings still standing would soon become wreathed in vines and creepers, where once vast crowds of people had gathered to watch royal processions, now the only sounds were the chirping of parakeets and the movements of monkeys in the trees. The stone arches of the city's palaces became home to bats and owls.

and already the species of tree that we most readily associate with the ruins of Angkor would have begun its steady conquest of these crumbling ruins. The banyan tree is an endophyte, the closest you can get to a predator in the plant world. It lives by devouring other trees. The tiny red seeds of the banyan are eaten by birds and then deposited in their droppings. Banyan seeds that fall on the ground usually die, but when they land on another tree, they put down roots into its bark. From that point on, the banyan grows swiftly, and the fate of the host tree is sealed. Banyans put down hanging roots that reach to the ground, and then wrap themselves around the

unfortunate host, growing to cover it completely and eventually strangling the life out of it like a boa constrictor. The host tree dies and decomposes, and soon only the banyan remains, with a hollow space in the tree's center where the unfortunate host once stood. But banyans are just as happy growing on a human construction as on a host tree. For this reason, removing sprouting banyan saplings from buildings is still an important part of building maintenance in countries like Cambodia and Sri Lanka today, much as it was in the time of the ancient Khmer. But in Angkor, there was no longer anyone left to do this. Soon after its abandonment, the seeds of the banyan would begin to fall on its abandoned temples and palaces. They would sprout and soon put down their hanging roots like

bunches of hair, which then swell and harden into woody trunks. If you watched a time-lapse video of this, it would look like some science fiction monster. wrapping its tentacles around the stones. The banyans slowly enveloped the temples and palaces, crushing stone walls beneath their weight, driving roots between stones, cracking pillars like twigs. Today, these banyan trees form some of the most iconic sites of the ruins of Angkor, draped over them like the arms of some tentacled creature,

intent on devouring the works of these ancient walls. Today, when we visit the ruins of Angkor, it reminds us of the dangers of the challenges our own society's face. They remind us of the threat that growing inequality poses as the rich become richer and the poor become poorer around the world. It also shows us the dangers posed by a global climate that has become increasingly variable and unpredictable. We may hope that our systems are robust enough to withstand whatever the global climate.

at Throzzed at us in the next century, but as the example of Angkor shows, this may not be something that we are able to take for granted. I want to end the episode by listening to a piece of music we've heard a few times already. It's an ancient Cambodian epic called the Riamka, performed by dancers in Cambodia. It's the Khmer version of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, about a man called Rama, whose wife is stolen from him by a demon king. It's a song of loss and love that sings down to us through the millennia and is still being performed in Cambodia today. As you listen, try to imagine what it must have been like

to live in that vast and ancient city of golden towers as its age of glory came to an end. Try to imagine what it must have felt like to live in a time when the great machinery of water control built by your ancestors was beginning to fail, and people are leaving the city in droves. As streets emptied and markets closed, as the monks left the temples and the fires in the rest stops began to go out, imagine being one of the last people to live in the city of Angkor, watching the sun set over the grand temples that are already beginning to crumble against

the skyline, sprouting with their first. Banyan saplings, as the cries of the parakeets and the monkeys sound in the growing darkness. Thank you once again for listening to the Fall of Civilizations podcast. I'd like to thank my voice actors for this episode, Ree Brignell, Lou Millington, and Sebastian Garbatch. I love to hear your thoughts and responses on Twitter, so please come and tell me what you thought. You can follow me at Paul M.M. Cooper. And if you'd like updates about the podcast, announcements about new episodes, as well as images, maps and reading suggestions, you can follow the podcast at Fall of Civ Pod, with underscores separating the words.

This podcast can only keep going with the support of our generous subscribers on Patreon. You keep me running, you help me cover my costs, and you also let me dedicate more time to researching, writing, recording and editing, to get the episodes out to you faster and bring as much life and detail to them as possible. I want to thank all my subscribers for making this happen, and I'll put a few extra maps, images, and a reading list up on Patreon as a way to say thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading onto patreon.com forward slash Fall of Civilizations underscore podcast, or just Google Fall of Civilization's Patreon.

If you can afford to, please contribute something and help keep this podcast running. For now, thanks for listening. Thank you.