Climate Change and Angkor

Big archaeological news hitting the Australian papers. It seems at this point that archaeologists have been arguing back and forth for centuries (it hasn’t even really been one century yet) about the purpose of those massive waterworks in the heart of Yasodharapura (now known as Angkor, a corruption of the Sanskrit/Pali word Nagara, which simply means ‘city.’). Were they used for irrigation? Were they merely symbolic? Was something else going on?

I’m not convinced that any of these questions have been answered finally, but this news article claims (by quoting Dr. Roland Fletcher, who has written consistently and incisively on Angkorean collapse for years now) that climate change may have had something to do with it. Actually, that’s only one of three causes cited in the article, though it is ‘the kicker,’ putting the final nail in the coffin constructed by overbuilding and environmental overreach.

Worth reading. Check it out here.