All language subtitles for 5. The Khmer Empire - Fall of the God Kings

In the year
1586, towards the end of the 16th century,

a Portuguese missionary called Antonio
de Magdelena

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.
Magdelena 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 site, 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 is 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 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

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 worked 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.

At the empire's heart was the mega-
-city

of Angkor.

Angkor covers an area of over one
thousand square kilometers,

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 percent 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 travelers
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

foreigners.

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 Chenla 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
Jayavarman II.

Little is known about the early life of
this shadowy warrior.

Jayavarman 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;

Jayavarman was the name of the last King
of the Empire of Chenla,

and in choosing the name Jayavarman 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 known 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 chvea.
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
campaka, 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 Vijaya, now near

the modern Vietnamese city of Qui Nyon,
the Cham

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, Jayavarman 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 Vyadhapura in
the southeast,

and then pushed up the Mekong River to
take Sambhupura.

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 Jayavarman 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 Jayavarman

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 'Lychee' Hills.
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

Jayavarman II
is the one dated to the year 1052,

two centuries after his death. It's found
at the temple

of Sdok Kak Thom in present-day Thailand.
His Majesty Jayavarman came from Java

to reign in the royal city of Indrapura.
A brahman proficient in the lore 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
deva raja,

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 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 cardamoms and mangoes"
which is likely

Myanmar or Eastern India.

Once his conquest was complete,
Jayavarman built a capital

at a place he called Hariharalaya,
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. He even

diverted the course
of the Siem Reap River to build his new

capital.
The ambition and scale of this project

was vast
and completely unprecedented in the

region.
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 Jayavarman 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 Jayavarman'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-

-varman 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.
50 million years ago, the Indian tectonic

plate
collided with the Eurasian 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.
This river is utterly teeming with

life;
its ecosystem has the second-highest

rate of biodiversity in the world
after only the Amazon River, containing

freshwater dolphins, giant stingray,
softshell 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 has

a maximum length of 250 kilometers,
with the width of a hundred kilometers.

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 meters into the air, or
over three stories.

That's because during the monsoon, the
lake's water level

rises from one meter deep to ten 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 meters, 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 Jayavarman
II

would follow his example in conducting
the Hindu ritual of the deva raja

to crown themselves as the god king of
Cambodia.

This title was not just a metaphor;
for much of Angkor'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 folktale 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

Kaundinya, who was descended from the god
of the sun.

One day, Kaundinya 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 Nagisoma and she was the

beautiful daughter of the serpent king.
Kaundinya 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,
Kaundinya 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 "Kambuja".

This Khmer story, like many legends of
its kind,

may have some grain of truth to it.
The Kambuja 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
Pallava 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.

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 is 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 favors 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 had built the first
great city

at the site of Angkor was a man named
Yashovarman.

He was the son of a King named
Indravarman.

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 'varman',
a Sanskrit word that means 'shield' or

'armor'.
The name Jayavarman, for instance, means

something like
'victory shield'. When the old king

Indravarman
died, he left behind two sons.

One of these brothers was Yashovarman.
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,

Yahshovarman 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
lake

Tonle Sap, that beating heart of the
Khmer world.

Inscriptions of the time claimed 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 wished themselves
to be seen.

Lion-man or not, we do know that after
much bitter fighting,

Yashovarman finally defeated his
younger brother

and claimed the crown for himself.

But Yashovarman 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.
Yashovarman's mother was now the true

royal one,
descended from the ancient kings of that

fallen empire of Chenla.
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

Yashovarman excelled in
is construction. In just the first year

of his reign, he built over a hundred
monasteries across the kingdom.

He ruled for another 20 years from 889
to his death in the year 910,

and during this time, he decided to build
a new capital.

Susceptible as ever to flattery, he named
this city after himself,

calling it Yashodhapura, but today we know
it by the name

Angkor. 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, Yashovarman 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.
It's not unknown in history for a

king to contract leprosy;
a 12th century King of Jerusalem known

as Baldwin IV
ruled for 10 years while suffering from

the disease.
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 Yashovarman.
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

discolored 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,

but 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 Yashovarman,

Angkor'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.
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 labourers 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. 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,

Angkor's people developed an ingenious
system of water control

that turned their capital into what is
known as a hydraulic city.

If you are able to soar like a bird over
ancient Angkor,

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.

As water drains from the Kulen hills
in the north,

the engineers of Angkor channelled it
into two enormous reservoirs

known as barays. These were the largest
human constructions built

until the modern industrial era.
The so-called west baray measures

roughly 8 x 2 kilometers,
or the size of 2,000 football

pitches,
while the east baray 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

a hundred meters
wide and ten meters tall, containing

eight million cubic meters of earth.

Today, the west baray is still an
enormous lake,

but the east baray contains no water.
Farmers grow their crops on what was

once its lake bed,
but its outlines remain clearly visible

in the landscape.
Together, these barays make Angkor one

of the human constructions
most readily visible from outer space.

These fast 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,

the Khmer could drain as much water from
the 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.

Angkor'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.

Like a modern city, it was divided into a
grid

of regular city blocks. A traveler 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

incentivized growth
and competition among regions.

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 Angkor'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 Angkor's people

had to be maintained and any shift in
religion

could undermine the entire system of
royal power.

Secondly, while Angkor'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.

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 labor-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. Angkor'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 Yashovarman, the

Tang dynasty
was entering into a nosedive.

Huge armies of bandits now ravaged
China's countryside

and sacked its 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 Indravarman 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 Khmer monuments
today is Angkor Wat.

By some estimations, it is the largest
religious structure

ever built, four times larger than the
Vatican City in Rome.

Angkor Wat 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 Kulen hills 40

kilometers to the north,
cut out of the 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
Khufu 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 Mouhot 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, a rival 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. 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
Suryavarman 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,

Suryavarman 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 Angkor Wat
shows King Suryavarman as he would like

to be seen,
as a mighty warrior riding into battle

on the back of an elephant.
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 Suryavarman liked to lead
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 Jayavarman II.

While the Khmer were an inland people,
the Cham

were seagoers, mariners, and traders.
One low-relief carving at the Ankorian

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.
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 Suryavarman 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, Suryavarman tried
again in the year 1145,

this time invading Champa. 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 Suryavarman

installed lasted only about
five years. He was ousted by Cham

rebellions
and when Suryavarman 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 Suryavarman 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.
Perhaps most devastatingly of all,

Suryavarman died without a clear
heir. 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 Suryavarman died, one of his

cousins seized the throne
and a bitter period of fighting began.

Now, increasingly inept rulers vyed for
control of the weakened Khmer state,

and it was amid all of this that the
great temple of Angkor Wat was finally

completed,
years after Suryavarman 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 Jayavarman II founded the empire

and crowned himself the first god king,
there had been a further four King

Jayavarmans,
but despite this common name, there was

something very unusual about this
Jayavarman. Unlike previous Hindu princes

of Angkor,
he was a devout Buddhist.

From the various sculptors that depict
him, we get an impression of Jayavarman

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 Jayavarman's Buddhist faith forbade
him from shedding blood,

and to shed the blood of a brother was
even more unthinkable

to him. 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 Tribhuvanāditya.

Astonishingly, Jayavarman 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 Tribhuvanāditya sitting on the throne.
Once again, Jayavarman'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 Tribhuvanāditya would
have just as much luck as Jayavarman'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. Jayavarman,
in his exile, must have watched the Cham

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 Vijaya.

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 Tribhuvanāditya 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 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
Tribhuvanāditya

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 devastated 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 VII.

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 on the throne in the

capital, Jayavarman
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.
Perhaps it was this newfound

responsibility that brought Jayavarman'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 Cham armies were expelled,
Jayavarman VII

rode back to Champa, this time not as a
broken exile, but at the head of an

army. He took revenge on the Cham people
for the destruction of Angkor,

sacking 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. 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 Thom, 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.

Jayavarman VII 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 Angkor Thom is his

bride.
Carvings in the Bayon temple in Angkor

Thom 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 works
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 Jayavarman 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 programme 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 Angkor Wat 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 VII had an enormous

temple
built in Angkor Thom 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

Angkor's people.
But the kingdom's conversion to Buddhism

would have wide-reaching consequences
that Jayavarman may not have

anticipated.
As a Buddhist, he renounced 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 Jayavarman 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 Jayavarman to
retain the traditional religious power

of the god-kings who had come before him.
But in the century that followed

Jayavarman'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 Theravada,

which held much closer to the way
Buddhism was originally taught

in its homeland of India. Theravada
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;

Khmer peasants paid punishing taxes to
the temples,

did back-breaking 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 Baray,
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 Theravada 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
Jayavarman VII'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. For the rulers of the empire

that followed,
this would spell disaster.

When Jayavarman VII died in the year
1220,

he would have been close to a hundred
years old.

The mourning 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

distances.
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

Jayavarman, 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
Jayavarman IX,

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.
The next thing we hear about the

city of Angkor is the report of those
Portuguese explorers

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?

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 Zho Daguan who spent a
year in Angkor. When he returned to China,

Zho Daguan 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 Angkor towards its end.

Zho 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 colonnades arranged in

harmonious patterns
stretch away on all sides.

Zho Daguan also noticed the large
numbers of Theravada Buddhist monks

walking the streets.
After nearly a century of growing

influence, the Khmer King Indravarman III
had finally made the austere religion of

Theravada
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, troops march at
the head of his escort,

then come flocks, banners, and music.
Palace women, three to five hundred of

them, wearing flowered cloth
with flowers in their hair, hold candles

in the hands bearing royal treasure of
gold

and silver. Carts 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. It's clear from
Zho's 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 pearls.

At wrists, ankles, and fingers,
he has gold bracelets

and rings all set with cat'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.
Jayavarman VII had been dead for almost

100 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.

Zho Daguan mentions this at one point in
his testimony.

In the recent war with the Siamese, the
country was utterly devastated.

These Siamese were the kingdom of
Ayutthaya,

in what is now known as Thailand.
Ayutthaya 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
Ayutthaya,

they would compare it to Paris in terms
of its size and wealth.

By this time, the Thai were beginning
to exert influence in the region,

conquering northern kingdoms and
city-states,

and by the year 1350, Ayutthaya
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.

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 Jayavarman VII, which had

boosted the empire's economy
for over a hundred 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 swept into the city and toppled
its king.

For a period, Angkor 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
Ayutthaya,

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.

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 Thom in the time of
Jayavarman VII.

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.
Recent evidence suggests that

Angkor's decline was not
a thunderclap. It didn't happen all at

once,
and there is little evidence of a mass

die-off of people.
New scientific evidence shows that the

intensity of land-use in the centre of
the city

had declined gradually for more than a
hundred 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, Angkor's

moat
was covered in a floating mat of swamp

vegetation,
indicating that it was no longer being

maintained.

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, droughts 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 1400 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.
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 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 Angkor Thom

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 lived 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
water works,

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 our 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 sights 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 societies 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 throws 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 Reamker, performed by dancers
in Cambodia.

It's the Khmer version of the Hindu epic
the Ramayana,

but 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 Civilization's Podcast.

I'd like to thank my voice actors for
this episode; Rhy 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.

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