Class: Sustainability and Resilience in History
Grade: 9.5/10
Year: 2017
Introduction
It’s 1431 in South-East Asia; in an area we now call Cambodia. At the time it was the Khmer Empire, one of the largest and most technologically advanced civilizations around. We’re standing in Angkor, the religious capital, and a sprawling “urban landscape…cover[ing] an area of about 1000 square kilometers” (Stone, 2013, pg. 2). Miles of waterworks stretch out from the temple at the center of what is known as the West Baray. Angkor Wat, “the largest religious building ever constructed on the planet” (Mithen, 2012, pg. 195), raises several stories into the sky, the red sandstone glittering in the evening sun in hues of gold, orange, and yellow. Standing here now, the vast waterworks seem sluggish, clogged with years of silt and sand, their walls broken down and in some areas blocked off. There is blood on the ground, smoke in the air, and great swatches of deforested hills all standing eerily silent. What happened here to bring about the destruction of a civilization over 600 years old? What happened to the great city that Jayavarman II founded in 802 C.E. (Stone, 2013, pg. 1) and why couldn’t such an advanced society stop it in time to save them from collapse? To discover this, we must return to the mid-1300s when things started to go wrong. Yet even before there were subtle issues arising. At the center of the Khmer’s demise was the mistaken the belief that humans could act as Gods and alter the landscape to whatever point he wished. In the case of the Khmer, the combination of climatic change (specifically drought conditions) and the hostile activities of neighbors was the tipping point that led to collapse.
