“When the political regime shifted and the city was faced with a series of extreme monsoons and droughts, the centralized system may have had a hard time coping”
in 2018, we used machine learning to estimate the age of temples that didn’t have inscriptions or artistic elements to date them. In the end, we were able to assign dates to over 5,000 community temples, reservoirs, ponds, and moats.that, unsurprisingly, the construction of small temples blossomed around new water sources: Small-holder farms took advantage of good growing conditions fostered by various kings’ construction of large hydraulic features.
What was strange was that we found a severe decrease in the number of new temple foundations on the landscape during the 11th and 12th centuries, right when the kings were constructing major projects like Angkor Wat, hospitals, and extensive road networks.We pondered this strange observation for months, until we had a eureka moment.
into the hands of the evermore wealthy. First the middle class was squeezed out, and then even the upper class lost their lands to the state.rapid change in agriculture in the 12th and 13th centuries coincides with a period of urbanization: the emergence of very large populations in epicenters. This wasBut the rise of kingly centralization ushered in an extended period of political and economic decline that lasted for centuries.
Farmers likely gathered at small community temples like this one, which may have helped them coordinate their community activities.Plenty of other societies and empires throughout human history have fallen prey to the problems of over-centralization. As communities grow larger, sometimes the diversity of crops grown or diverse traditions get lost. A larger, more cohesive and more uniform system can be very efficient at feeding a large population.
Resilient systems are those that are flexible enough to respond to challenges. Global food supply networks and infrastructure will be strained by the current COVID-19 crisis as food production workers fall ill, transport falters, and borders close. Is the global food system flexible enough to meet the new demands and respond to this unprecedented challenge? Angkor’s did not seem to be. Only time will tell what happens to the world’s modern empires.