Next in number detent and freshwater congas the prawns of char and weigh as much as half a kilo Apiece Crocodiles their ice large as boats Apart from fish the Staple diets like most of Asia was rice addy Fields need a plentiful supply of water to ensure a healthy crop When the founding Ruler Jaya Varman arrived at Angkor there were already peasant Farmers cultivating ancient Rice fields But from the 9th to the 13th centuries successive. God kings ordered thousands more acres of jungle to be cleared for rice production Water had to be cleverly harnessed to irrigate the New Fields If the system failed the very survival of the kingdom would be at stake Well maintained canals were also crucial to uncle Every day tons of heavy stones for the construction of temples will be transported by canal from the Coulomb field Planning expert Jaga believes the success of Angkor is due to the elaborate system of interconnecting waterways You are tanks of ponds which are dead to keep also this water and you have some canonization this royal palace is full of small Canalization the City is full of channels and the outside theatre is also full of big channels this systems Which are different level of scale they must have been connected to each other? It was the Khmer’s ability to harness water that made them unique While the Dutch were experimenting with their first canals the Khmer were already past masters The most recent excavation by jacques osha reveals the complexity of Khmer water management within the Royal city his surveys have uncovered two huge reservoirs each measuring 300 meters long and 20 meters wide a Major Road intersected them Water needed to flow around the city What go shire wanted to know was how the road could be used while water still flowed from one reservoir to the other?
So he began to dig the excavation unearthed the stone dike where the road and reservoirs met It also shows that the reservoirs were built on slightly different levels Beneath the surface of the Road narrow channels in the dike allow water filter from the upper reservoir into the lower But the arrangement may have been too finely balanced Playing at such a scale with the management of water With such small differences of level. I think the system was quite fragile, and if there were any variability in the environment Or in the maintenance of the city for social problems of political ones I think the precision I mean the ultra-Sophistication can have been a weakness in the system in a way This complex system provided water throughout the royal city for drinking cooking and even bathing Cambodia is an excessively hot country and it is impossible to get through the day without fading several times There are no valve houses no basins However every family has a pond or several families of one in common men and women go naked into this pond the construction of extensive water systems and great stone temples in the jungle Demanded colossal manpower Why would the command be prepared to devote so much of their year toiling in the Kings name?
Why was it that the peasantry out there in the field? Contributed so much labor Willingly it seems to the maintenance of the center and the answer may well be that they really believed that the king Was a god and they were working in the service of the deity and this kept them going oh I think without a doubt I fully agree with you right you couldn’t have built city of Angkor without that kind of firm belief But although the Khmer people dedicated enormous effort into constructing their great city It was the addition of slave labor that made it possible Show describes these unfortunates Wild men from the hills can be bought to serve as slaves families of wealth may own more than 100 those of lesser means content themselves with ten or twenty Only the very poor have none we know - again from the inscriptions that some of them had a very raw deal there was one who tried to escape from the land to which he was in which he was born and was and was assigned and they found him then they brought him back and They gouged his eyes out and cut off his ears Punishment was severe for all subjects of Angkor noted the Chinese diplomat In very serious cases a digits dug outside the city The Criminal is dropped into it Earth and stones are heaped on top until he is buried alive Lesser Crimes are dealt with by cutting off feet or hands or by amputating the nose The economy of Angkor was based on international trade.
The Kumars produced food for their swelling population, but there was a surplus for trade with neighboring States They won’t find cloth cast huge bronze statues and exported ivory Kingfisher feathers Beans Wax and sent abroad their main Trading partner was China the reliefs of the Bayan reveal a Chinese trade junk coming across the waters of the great lake just south of Angkor and we know that there was indeed a great deal of trade going on because of the more recent archaeological research that has been Excavating in the royal palace and there they’ve been unearthing a considerable quantity of Chinese ceramics Jaguars Delegation were not the only Chinese in Angkor in fact Chinese settlers had been there for years The Chinese always take a wife here as soon as they arrive deriving additional benefit from the woman’s business skills in Cambodia it is the women who take charge of trade. There are no shops in which the merchants live instead They display their goods on matting spread on the ground women held positions of power and Authority They owned property engaged in trade and even served as bodyguards to the King But the Chinese interest in Cambodian women was not driven Solely by trade Everyone with whom I talked said that the Cambodian women are highly sexed One or two days after giving birth to a child they are ready for intercourse if the husband is not Responsive he will be discarded By the end of the 13th century Angkor was at its peak a succession of God Kings had built this beautiful and astonishing City a Sophisticated water system made the City work Fed its people and created wealth But then at its very peak cracks in the system began to appear Cracks that would lead to the city being abandoned to the jungle It took nearly 500 years for Angkor to grow - the vast city that the Chinese diplomat show dog juan described in 1296 Yet, just a century later the City lay deserted given up to the jungle But why throughout history there are a few examples of cities being totally abandoned One key Factor is known throughout and cause history the Khmer had waged war with their neighbors In the early years of Angkor the Vietnamese chasm were the Khmer sworn enemies Most of the Temple Walls around the Capitol depict Epic battles against the chance But by the time of jaw dog wonk with the main threat came from the emerging Thai kingdom of Siam as it expanded into CambodiaHere comes recently during the war with Siam whole Villages have been laid waste In the diplomats eyes the Khmer army was ill-prepared for war Soldiers move about unclothed and their foot in the right hand is carried a lance in the left a shield They have no bows no missiles. No breastplate and no helmets Generally speaking these people have neither disciplined nor strategy inscriptions show that in 1431 the this sacked Angkor they looted everything possible to enslave them much of the population including the Kings entire hiring and Carried them off to Thailand Abandoned the city of Angkor was slowly reabsorbed into the jungle from which it had emerged five centuries before Moreau wrote in 1861 Must ask what has become of this powerful race so civilized and enlightened to create these gigantic works The conventional explanation is that the empires rulers lost their grip on power and the tithe simply scared them off?
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