Urban rampant may have exterminated Angkor Wat

A new map based on satellite data revealed Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple is the center of one of the world's largest pre-industrial cities. They also open the light for Angkor's mysterious decline.

Angkor is the capital of the Khmer kingdom from the 9th to 16th centuries. The ruined and ruined temple remains today, Angkor Wat, built in the 12th century on the orders of one of the emperors of that period.

Using ground radar data provided by NASA, the researchers found evidence that Angkor covered nearly 1,000 square kilometers. By comparison, the city of Philadelphia today is only 350 square kilometers while Phoenix (all of the United States) occupies more than 1,300 square kilometers, not to mention the vast suburbs. Each of these cities has more than 1.5 million people.

"However, in terms of population, Angkor has only a few hundred thousand people," said Damian Evans, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney, Australia. "There are cities with a much larger population in China before, during and after the Angkor period."

Illustrating the neighborhoods around Angkor Wat.(Photo: LiveScience)

Angkor's irrigation and decay system

The new radar technique also identified more than 1,000 new artificial lakes and more than 70 long-damaged temples. These data provide fresh evidence for the view raised more than 50 years ago: Angkor uses a complex irrigation system linked to lakes and the city's decline. is the consequence of excessive land exploitation.

Angkor's irrigation system includes canals in the north, pouring water into large reservoirs in the city center, next to the temple."From here, a series of other distribution channels lead the country to the southern region of Angkor."

In the 1950s, archaeologist Bernard-Philippe Groslier surmised that the trail of a water-conducting network was part of an ancient irrigation network that supplied water to suburban farmers. Groslier also argued that the spoilage of this network, stemming from over-exploitation of land, was related to Angkor's collapse.

Supporting Groslier's hypothesis, new maps and recent excavations revealed rifts in the canals and efforts to patch up the system.

Ground radar data provided by NASA (Photo: LiveScience)

Modern lesson

"Our work shows that Angkor is certainly very large, and land use is fierce enough to have a strong impact on the regional ecosystem," Evans said.

Angkor was surrounded by vast rice fields, but to have it had to clear the forest on a large area. Over time, dense farming may have led to serious ecological problems, including the consequences of deforestation, erosion and surface soil leaching.

The consequences of depleting the environment are not the only lessons that Angkor leaves for modern societies. This ancient citadel also needs a large network of infrastructure (such as canals and roads) that need to be maintained - a difficult and expensive job."This is worth considering, especially with modern cities today spreading too wide and sparsely populated as Angkor".

Model to rebuild Angkor area space (Photo: LiveScience)

T. An