Before You Read

A. Completion. Use the information on this page to complete the notes The temples of Angkor remain
about the Khmer Empire. a symbol of classic Khmer
(Cambodian) architecture.
Empire founded by: -- - - -- - - - - - - -
Capital city: - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Religion(s) : _
Name of famous landmark: - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Start of empire's decline: - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

B. Skimming and Predicting. Skim the first page of the article

(page 19). Predict what you think caused the decline of Angkor. Then
read the rest of the article to check your ideas.

18 UnitlB

I.
 An Empire's Fall
rJ Almost hidden amid the forests of northern Cambodia is the scene of one of the
greatest vanishing acts of al l time . This was once t he heart of the Khmer kingdom ,
which lasted from the 9th to the 15th centuries. At its height, t he Khmer Empire
5 dominated much of Southeast Asia, from Myanmar (Burma) in t he west to
Vietnam in the east. As many as 750,000 people lived in Angkor, its magnificent
capital. The most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world, Angkor
stretched across an area the size of New York City. Its greatest temple, Angkor
Wat, is the world's largest religious monument even today.

[l]10 Yet when the first European missionaries arrived in Angkor in the late 16th century,
they found a city that w as already dying. Scholars have come up with a list of
suspected causes for Angkor's decline. These include foreign invaders, a religious
change of heart, and a shift to maritime trade. But it's mostly guesswork : Roughly
1 If you say something is
1,300 inscriptions survive on temple doors and monuments, but t he people of sublim e , you mean it
15 Angkor left not a si ngle word explaining their kingdom's collapse. has a wonderfu l quality.

Unit lB 19

..
 Some scholars assume t hat Angkor died
the way it lived: by the sword . The historical
records of Ayutthaya, a neighboring state,
claim that warriors from that kingdom " took "
20 Angkor in 1431. If so, their motive is not
diffi cult to guess. No doubt Angkor wou ld
have been a rich prize: In scription s boast that
its temple towe rs were cove red w ith gold.
After its rediscovery by Western travelers just
25 ove r a century ago, historians deduced from
Angkor's ruin s that the city had been loot ed 2
by invaders from Ayutthaya.
m Roland Fletcher, co-director of a research
effort called the Greater Angkor Project, is
30 not co nvinced . Some earl y scholars, he says,
viewed Angkor according to the sieges 3 and
conquests of European history. "The ruler of
Ayutthaya, indeed, says he took Angkor, and
he may have taken some formal regali a4 back
35 to Ayutthaya with him, " says Fletcher. But
after Angkor was captured, Ayutthaya's ruler
placed his son on the throne. "He's not likely
to have smashed the pl ace up before givi ng it
to his so n."
1)40 A religious shift may also have contri buted
to the city's decline, by diminishing royal
authority. Angkor was a regal-ritual city;
its kings claimed to be the world emperors
of Hindu mythology and erected tem ples
45 to themse lves. But in the 13th and 14th
centuries, Theravada Buddhism gradually took
over from Hinduism. Its principles of social
equality may have threatened Angkor's elite.
" It was ve ry subversive, 5 just like Christian ity
50 was subversive to the Roman Empire," says
Fletcher.
D The regal-ritual city operated on a moneyless
economy, relying on tribute 6 and taxation. The
kingdom's main currency was rice, the staple
55 food of the laborers w ho built the temples and
the thousands who ran them. For one temple
complex, Ta Prohm , more than 66,000 farmers
produced nearly 3,000 tons of rice a year. Th is
was then used to feed the temple's priests,
60 dancers, and workers. Scholars estimate th at
farm laborers comprised nearly half of Greater
Angkor's population. A new religion that
promoted ideas of social equality might have
led to rebellion .
m6s Or maybe the royal court simply turned its
back on Angkor. Angkor's rulers often erected
new temple complexes and let older ones
decay. Thi s may have doomed the city when
sea trad e began to develop between Southeast
70 Asia and China. Maybe it was simple economic
opportunism t hat, by the 16th century, had
caused the Khmer center of power to shift:
The move to a location closer to t he Mekong
River, near Cambodia's present-day capital,
75 Phnom Penh, allowed it easier access to t he
sea.
m Economic and religious changes may have
contributed to Angkor's downfall , but its rulers
faced another foe . Angkor was powerfu l
80 largely t hanks to an advanced system of
canals and reservoirs. These enabled the
city to keep scarce water in dry months
and disperse excess water during the rainy
season. But forces beyond Angkor's control
85 would eventually bring an end to t hi s carefu lly
constructed, rational system .
D Few ancient sites in southern Asia could
compare to Angkor in its ability to guarantee
a steady water supply. That reliability req uired
90 massive feats of engineering. The first scho lar
to appreciate t he scale of Angkor's waterworks
was French archeologist Bernard -Philippe
Groslier. In 1979, he argued thatthe great
2 If a store or house is looted, people have stolen things f rom
it, for example, during a war or riot.
3 A siege is a military or police operation in which soldiers or
police surrou nd a place in order to force the people there to
come out.
4 Regalia is t he ceremon ial jewelry, objects, or clothes that
symbolize royalty or high office.
5 Something that is subversive is intended to weaken or
destroy a political system or government.
6 A tribut e is something you give, say, do, or make to show
your adm iration and respect for someone.
Unit lB 21
 reservoirs, or barays, served two purposes: to
95 symbolize the Hindu cosmos7 and to irrigate
the rice fields. Unfortunately, Groslier could
not pursue his ideas further. Cambodia's civil
war, 8 the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge, 9
and the subsequent arrival of Vietnamese
100 forces in 1979 turned Angkor into a no-go
zone for two decades.
D In the 1990s, Christophe Pottier followed up
on Groslier's ideas and discovered that the
south part of Angkor was a vast dispersed
105 landscape of housing, water tanks, shrines,
roads and canals. Then, in 2000, Roland
Fletcher and his colleague Damian Evans-as
part of a collaborative study with Pottier-
saw some NASA radar images of Angkor. The
110 researchers marveled at the sophistication of
Angkor's infrastructure. "We realized that
the entire landscape of Greater Angkor is
artificial," Fletcher says. Teams of laborers
constructed hundreds of ki lometers of canals
115 and dikes 10 that diverted water from the rivers
to the barays. Overflow channels bled off
excess water that accumulated during the
summer monsoon months. After the monsoon,
irrigation channels dispensed the stored
120 water. "It was an incredibly clever system,"
says Fletcher.
13 Fletcher was therefore baffled when his team
made a surprising discovery. An extraordinary
piece of Angkorian workmanship-a vast
125 structure in the waterworks-had been
destroyed, apparently by Angkor's own
engineers. "The most logical explanation is
that the dam failed," Fletcher says. The river
may have begun to erode the dam, or perhaps
130 it was washed away by an unusually heavy
flood . The Khmer broke apart the remaining
stonework and modified the blocks for other
purposes.
II Any weakening of the waterworks wou ld
135
have left the city vulnerable to a natural
phenomenon that none of Angkor's engineers
could have predicted . Starting in the 1300s,
it appears that Southeast Asia experienced a
22 UnitlB
,
period of extreme climate change which also
140 affected other parts of the world . In Europe,
which endured centuries of harsh winters and
cool summers, it was known as the Little
Ice Age.
m To an already weakened kingdom , extreme ·
145 weather would have been the final blow.
Decades earlier, Angkor's waterworks were
already struggling. "We don't know why the
water system was operating below capacity,"
says Daniel Penny, co-director of the Greater
150 Angkor Project. "But what it means is that
Angkor . . . was more exposed to the threat of
drought than at any other time in its history."
If inhabitants of parts of Angkor were starving
whi le other parts of the city were hoarding a
155 finite quantity of rice, the most likely result
was social instability. "When populations in
tropical cou ntries exceed the carrying capacity
of the land , real trouble begins," says Yale
University anthropologist Michael Coe. "This
160 inevitably leads to cu ltural collapse." A hun gry
army weakened by internal problems would
have exposed the city to attack. Indeed,
Ayutthaya's invasion happened near the end
of a long period of drought.
m16s Add to the climate chaos the political and
religious changes already affecting the
kingdom, and Angkor's prospects were bleak,
says Fletcher. "The world around Angkor was
changing. Society was moving on . It would
170 have been a surprise if Angkor persisted."
m The Khmer Empire was not the first civilization
brought down by climate catastrophe.
Centuries earlier, loss of environmental stability
likewise brought down another powerful
175 kingdom halfway around the world . Many
7 The cosmos is the universe.
8 A civil war is a war fought between different groups of
people who live in the same country.
9 The Khmer Rouge was a radical communist movement
that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 after winning
powe r th rough a guerrilla war.
10 A dike is a wall built to prevent flooding.
 scholars now believe that the fall of the Maya
city-states in Mexico and Central America
followed a series of droughts in the 9th
century. "Essentially, the same thing happened
180 to Angkor," says Coe, who in the 1950s was
the first to detect similarities between the
Khmer and Maya civilizations.
m In the end, the tale of Angkor is a sobering 11
lesson in the limits of human ingenuity.
185 "Angkor's hydrau lic 12 system was an
Intricate carvings depicting an ancient battle on the walls of the Banteay Srei temple located in Angkor
amazing machine, a wonderful mechanism
for regulating the world," Fletcher says. Its
engineers managed to keep the civilization's
achievement running for six centuries-until a
190 greater force overwhelmed them .
11 A situation that is sobering is one that seems senous and
makes you become thoughtful.
12 Hydraulic equipment or machinery Involves or is
operated by a f luid that is under pressure, such as water
or oil.
 Reading Comprehension
.______ __

Multiple Choice. Choose the best answer for each question.

Purpose 1. What was the author's main purpose in writing this article?
a. to offer various explanations for the fall of Angkor
b. to trace the history of Angkor from the 9th to the 15th century
c. to explain the inscriptions left in the temples by the people of
Angkor
d. to describe the irrigation system that allowed Angkor to
flourish
Detail 2. According to the information in the first and second paragraphs
(A-B), which of the following is NOT true about Angkor?
a. It once ruled a large part of Southeast Asia.
b. It was at one time the largest urban center in the world .
c. It once held as many people as New York City does today.
d. It was in decline when Europeans arrived in the 16th century.
Vocabulary 3. The phrase by the sword (line 17) is closest in meaning to
a. suddenly b. unexpectedly
c. violently d. secretively
Reference 4. The word it in line 38 refers to _ __
a. the kingdom of Ayutthaya b. the destruction of Angkor
c. the formal regalia d. the city of Angkor
Inference 5. We can infer from information in paragraph F that the greatest Critical Thinking
number of people in Angkor worked as _ __
Evaluating: According
a. construction workers b. dancers
to the article, what kinds
c. priests d. agricultural workers
of challenges did the
Detail 6 . How did the climate in Angkor change in the 1300s? kingdom of Angkor face?
a. Winters became too cool to grow rice. Which of these continue
b. Rising temperatures caused great discomfort. to threaten modern
c. There were terrible storms and constant flooding. civilizations?
d. Weather conditions became more extreme.
Rhetorical 7 . Why does the author mention the Little Ice Age in paragraph L? Discussion: Angkor
Purpose a. to show that climate change caused more cultures to fail in Wat today is an
Europe than in Asia important symbol of
b. to emphasize the extent and significance of climate change the modern nation of
in the 1300s Cambodia. What place
c. to explain why European cities were not as advanced or monument in your
as Angkor country do you think
d. to show how Angkor's climate in the 1300s was simHar to best symbolizes your
Europe's country? Why?

24 Uoitl B

,
------Reading Skill
~--------------

Evaluating the Strengths of Arguments

An argument is a statement put forward by a writer that is su pported by
reasons or evidence. A writer may present one or more arguments in a text.
As a reader, you need to evaluate t he arguments to decide which are the
strongest. One way to do t his is to ask yourself quest ions as you read.

• Is the evidence a fact or an opinion?

• Is the evidence a fact or an unproven theory?
• Is the evidence supported by data or research?
• Is the evidence relevant and up to date?
• Are the sources that are cited credible?
• Does the writer provide enough evidence to support the argument?
• Is the author biased or prejudiced in any way?

A. Analyzing. Match each argument for why Angkor declined (1- 5) with pieces of
evidence (a-e).
1. Invaders conquered Angkor.
2. ________ A religious shift contributed to the city's decline.
3. The royal court turned its back on Angkor.
4. The water management system broke down.
5. A weakened Angkor was further hurt by climate change.

a. In the 1300s, Southeast Asia experienced a period of severe drought.

b. A shift to Theravada Buddhism diminished the kings' royal authority.
c. Angkor's own engineers seem to have destroyed a dam.
d. Angkor's rulers often built new temple complexes and let older ones decay.
e. Historical records of Ayutthaya claim their warriors took Angkor.

B. Evaluating. Find other evidence in the reading passage that support the
arguments above. Which argument for Angkor's decline do you think is most
likely?

Unit l B 25

,
A. Definitions. Read the information below. Then match each word in red with
its definition.

During the past century, California has bui lt a sophisticated mechanism for
delivering water. Thousands of kilometers of pipes and channels cross the state,
dispersing water for farms, factories, and homes. However, the state's water
resources are now severely stretched .

Some reasons for the crisis are environmental. A three-year drought has drained
most of the state's reservoirs to low levels. California's largest internal st orehouse
of surface water- the Sierra Nevada mou ntain range-has less snow due to
warmin g t em peratures, leavi ng the state more reliant on external sources.

Some experts argue that California is vulnerable to the same fate of ancient
civilizations, such as the Khmer and the Maya. These civilizations collapsed when
water resources became scarce.

Recently, laws have been introduced to promote water conservation in

major cities. However, water ex perts say that to solve their water problems,
Californians should learn to live within the water resou rces of a dry landscape.

1. _ _ _ __ : spreading over a wide a rea

2. _ _ _ __ :passageways along which water flows
3. _ _ _ _ _: very small in amount; not plentiful
4. _ _ _ _ _: located on the inside of something
5. _ _ _ __ :a machine or system for doing something

B. Words in Context. Complete each sentence with the correct answer. Californian
communities are
1. If someone shows ingenuity when solving a problem, he or she shows _ _ __ dependent on water
a. skill or cleverness b. lack of creativity pumped in from the
Colorado River.
2. An event that doomed a civilization ____ it.
a. helped b. destroyed

3. If you ate subsequent to your arrival at the hotel, you ate ____ arriving
at the hotel.
a. before b. after

4. A regime is a system of government, especially one that is _ _ __ •

a. lenient b. harsh

5. If you assume something, you _ _ __

a. believe something to be true without knowing it's true
b. are sure of something even when others tell you the opposite

26 Unit 1B