(The Vishnu temple at Angkor Wat – Photograph by Srijith)

The Khemer kingdom of Cambodia,  known for the construction of magnificent temples like Angkor Wat, had a domain that extended from south Vietnam to Yunan China in the North and westward till the Bay of Bengal. The city’s economy was based on rice and a network of reservoirs, canals and bridges were  built to move people and goods.

The Khemer engineers  changed the direction of rivers for growing rice. The water system had canals in the North that funneled water into the city center and then from the city center a series of distributor canals sent water to the southern region.

The general reason mentioned for the demise of this kingdom is an attack by the Thais in 1431. But now scientists think that the demise happened much before, due to the evils of urban societies, like ecological failure and infrastructure breakdown. Now there are more discoveries on what happened to the Khemer kingdom.

A ground sensing radar provided by NASA has revealed new information about the Khemer kingdom. We now know that it was larger than present day Philadelphia and Phoenix, but with much less population. This radar has also identified new man-made ponds and long lost temples in this  preindustrial low-density complex centered around the Angkor Wat temple.

There is more evidence that the fall of this civilization might have been due to over exploitation of land.

“Our research shows that Angkor was certainly extensive enough, and that land-use was certainly intensive enough, to have impacted profoundly on the regional ecology,” Evans told LiveScience.

Angkor was surrounded by a vast expanse of rice fields that would have required extensive forest clearance. Over time, the intense farming could have led to serious ecological problems, including those associated with deforestation, overpopulation, topsoil degradation and erosion.

The consequence of overexploiting the environment isn’t the only lesson Angkor’s fate has for modern society, Evans said. Angkor required a massive infrastructural network of canals and roads to keep it running.

“This increasingly complex elaborate system would have been very difficult and expensive to maintain,” Evans said. “This is obviously something to bear in mind, considering that many cities in our contemporary world are expansive, low-density urban sprawls as Angkor appears to have been.” [Urban Sprawl May Have Doomed Cambodia’s Angkor Wat]

 

In South Eastern Iran, near the city of Jiroft,
archaeologists
uncovered the remains of a large wealthy city some time back. This city
which would have existed around the time of the Harappan civilization was more
than 2 square kilometers and was dominated by a large fortress for protecting
the town.

In one of the tombs, there were burial chambers in which beads and other
precious materials were scattered around. Lapis and turquoise beads, chlorite
and copper vessels were found indicating that the residents were affluent.
While pottery from one site was dated 4000 B.C.E, researchers found a bustling
metropolis nearby dated 2550 – 2400 B.C.E.The affluence of the residents of
this site came from trade. Archaeologists have found lapis from Afghanistan,
shells from Pakistan, vessels from Indus and game boards from Ur in this city.

In the ancient globalized world merchandise from one part of the world used to
be available in another part thanks to these trading posts on the way. Thus if
someone in Mesopotamia or Indus wanted copper from Oman he could get it. If a
housewife in Central Asia wanted an Omani pot to crack on her husband’s head it
would be available in the market. Indus and Mesopotamian seals have been found
in Turkmenistan along with Iranian goods.

The different cities excavated have revealed that they all did not have a
monolithic culture, but they had their own individuality with their own pottery
styles and art.
Three
tablets discovered in the cities had unique iconography and there is debate
on if it was really a writing system.Unlike the ancient civilizations, the one
around Jiroft is not around a river or near the ocean and so it is believed that
bullock carts and camels were used in the over land trade route.

Previously only the civilizations around the Tigris and Euphrates, Nile
and the Indus were mentioned as ancient civilizations.
While Mesopotamia is usually called the cradle of civilization, the
discovery of places like the ancient cities near Jiroft has led to an
expanded
view of the origin of civilization. According to the new view, many
urban centers existed along the arc from Iraq to India and these trading
communities  adopted the technologies, architectures and ideas from other
civilizations.