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posted by martyb on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the Angkor-didn't-die-in-a-day dept.

ArsTechnica:

In the early Middle Ages, nearly one out of every thousand people in the world lived in Angkor, the sprawling capital of the Khmer Empire in present-day Cambodia. But by the 1500s, Angkor had been mostly abandoned—its temples, citadels, and complex irrigation network left to overgrowth and ruin. Recent studies have blamed a period of unstable climate in which heavy floods followed lengthy droughts, which broke down the infrastructure that moved water around the massive city.

But it turns out Angkor’s waterworks may have been vulnerable to these changes because there was no one left to maintain and repair them. A new study suggests that Khmer rulers, religious officials, and city administrators had been steadily flowing out of Angkor to other cities for at least a century before the end.

They should have given the Sewer Workers Local the raise they were asking for.


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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:31PM (2 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:31PM (#808410) Journal

    A period of unstable climate? it's as if climate would change no matter the carbon credits thrown at it? Recalculating....

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:36PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:36PM (#808457)

    It must have been all their power plants, airplane trips and driving gas guzzlers that caused it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @12:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @12:37AM (#808486)

      No, it was that taxes were not high enough.

      “The wealth of Angkor’s elite comes from an elaborate system of tribute and taxation that operated through a network of temples,” Penny told Ars. So the gradual departure of religious and political elites may have lifted an economic burden.

      https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/the-city-of-angkor-died-a-slow-death/ [arstechnica.com]