SOCECOL E8 Lecture 6: Angkor legacy questions
26 May 2016
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Diamond"s impression: no advance reading could have prepared me for experiencing at first hand the reality of it enormous scale. (526) At it peak around a thousand years ago, it was the world"s most extensive city, among the most populous ones, and the capital of the largest and most powerful empire in southeast asia (the. Its temples, such as angkor wat, include the largest religious monuments of the pre-modern world. (526) Yet by the 19th century there remained only about eight small villages dispersed over the central area formerly covered by this vast city. Cambodia today has become southeast asia"s poorest country. At its maximum extent, the empire controlled one-third of mainland southeast asia (528) Angkor"s major environmental challenges were related to rain and water. Annual rainfall is 59 inches comparable to new york city and different than new guinea at 400 and los angeles of 15. Rainfall varies predictably between seasons and unpredictably from year to year.
