BRIEFING: Cambodia relics vulnerable to further ruin

SIEM REAP, Cambodia (AP) By destroying vast tracts of forest to enlarge their farmland, inhabit- ants of the wondrous city of Angkor ignited the fuse to an ecological time bomb that spelled doom for what was once the world’s largest urban area.

So theorize archaeologists engaged in groundbreaking research into the ancient civilization of Angkor.

They are warning that history could repeat itself through reckless, headlong pursuit of dollars from tourists flocking to see Angkor’s fabled monuments.

“It’s just a weird cycle. It seems like Angkor is self-repeating itself,” said Mitch Hendrickson, who recently led an excavation as part of research into Angkor as a human settlement.

Conservationists have long expressed concerns about the state of the monuments, especially the stress from the tourist invasion. They also say the uncontrolled pumping of underground water to meet rising demand of hotels, guesthouses and residents in the adjoining town of Siem Reap might be destabilizing the earth beneath the centuries-old temples so much that they might sink and collapse.

“There’s just so much building going on without any concern about the long term. Things are moving so fast in Siem Reap today that it’s going to chew itself up very quickly and become unsustainable,” said Mr. Hendrickson, an archaeologist from the University of Sydney in Australia.

From their city, Angkorian kings ruled over most of Southeast Asia during their pinnacle between the ninth and 14th centuries, overseeing the stone constructions, including Angkor Wat, regarded as a marvel of religious architecture.

Although the 1431 invasion from what is now Thailand has long been regarded as a major cause of Angkor’s fall, archaeologists from the Australian university’s Greater Angkor Project suspect earlier ecological forces led to the city’s demise.

Their findings supported a theory put forward in the early 1950s by Bernard-Philippe Groslier, a French archaeologist, that the collapse of Angkor resulted from exploitation of the environment.

Angkor’s inhabitants started rice farming from the low-lying area near the Tonle Sap lake, just south of the town of Siem Reap, said Roland Fletcher, another archaeologist with the project.

They gradually cut down natural forest to extend their farmland to the slope of Kulen mountain, 50 miles to the north, said Mr. Fletcher, who led 10 archaeologists to excavate various sites near the Angkor complex.

Flooding ensued, and huge amounts of sediment and sand washed into canals, probably choking the vital water-management system.

Using NASA’s airborne imaging radar data, the project has conducted numerous aerial and ground surveys across nearly 1,200 square miles, which revealed that the city — with about 1 million inhabitants — was far larger than previously thought.

It covered about 385 square miles and featured a sophisticated hydraulic system that proved too vast to manage.

Angkor was “a huge, low-density, dispersed urban complex” comparable to Los Angeles and “by far the most extensive preindustrial city on the planet,” Mr. Fletcher said.

Story Continues →