0:00

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History

0:02

Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie

0:14

Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And if

0:16

you've been listening to the podcast, you know how much

0:18

Katie and I love a good lost

0:21

city. We've talked about Atlantis recently,

0:24

and a little while before that we talked about the North

0:26

Chico in South America. So

0:28

these cities that disappear, or empires

0:31

that appear out of nowhere and

0:33

then disappear again seemed

0:35

to fascinate us. So today we're

0:38

going to do the lost city of Anchor.

0:40

And when Sarah said this earlier, I was

0:42

like, oh, you want to talk about Anchor Watt and she

0:44

said, no, there's a lot more to it than that's

0:47

just one temple, Katie. So today

0:49

it's ruins and peasants who grow

0:51

rice in northwestern Cambodia. That's what you

0:53

think of when you're thinking of Ancre Watt. But

0:56

back in medieval times it was something else.

0:58

It was a very impress us, a

1:00

very huge city with a lot of

1:02

amazing works of engineering.

1:04

But what went wrong? Well,

1:07

to do that, let's start out with a little bit of background

1:09

on Anchor, which starts in

1:11

a D. Eight hundred and Sarah was saying, it's

1:14

lovely to be able to start with one person

1:16

instead of the people

1:18

from this river came and exactly

1:21

nice to have one warrior type

1:23

guy coming into the picture early on.

1:25

And in this case it's a powerful regional

1:27

king named Jaya Armand Too. And

1:30

Jaya Armand consolidated the chiefdoms

1:32

in Cambodia and he formed the Kingdom

1:35

of Anchor, and he's the

1:37

one who decides that the Khmer

1:39

royalty, the Cambodian royalty,

1:42

would be linked to the gods, creating

1:44

the cult of the devil Rajah,

1:46

which is literally the god king or

1:48

king of the gods. So this proves

1:51

to be a very important part of

1:53

our story, this close relationship

1:56

between the the

1:58

king's and the gods, and

2:00

the monuments they would build to both themselves

2:03

and to the gods. Right and Anchor

2:05

is his capital, the capital of the Khmer

2:07

or Cambodian Empire from the ninth century

2:10

to the fifteenth century a d. Which

2:12

is known as the Classical era of Cambodian

2:14

history. And we are going to

2:16

have a little bit of river people descendant.

2:19

So we started with the king, but the

2:21

people were descended from the Funan

2:23

of the Mekong Delta and the

2:26

Khmer Empire is highly influenced

2:28

by Hinduism and Buddhism

2:31

and that comes from centuries old

2:33

contact with Indian traders,

2:35

but they still retain some of their traditional

2:38

religions. They kind of blended blended

2:40

it all together, right. And this is

2:42

a huge territory, we should add. It

2:44

goes from the tip of the Indo Chinese Peninsula

2:46

north to the modern Yunnan Province

2:49

in China and from Vietnam westward

2:51

towards the Bay of Bengal, which all sounds completely

2:54

insane. But the city of Anchor was

2:56

bigger than Rhode Island, if that gives you an idea.

2:58

Yeah. And for such a huge

3:00

city, they fund huge construction

3:03

projects. And the biggest

3:05

one that Katie mentioned earlier, Anger

3:07

Watt, probably the most famous um.

3:10

It's a temple complex that was built in

3:12

the twelfth century. There's also

3:14

Anchored Tom, another temple

3:16

complex which was built in twelve

3:18

hundred by King Jaya

3:21

Armand the seventh. And it's

3:23

after that King Jai of Armand the Seventh

3:25

when Angor starts to go downhill,

3:28

and by fourteen thirty one

3:31

it's been partially abandoned. By

3:33

the time the Portuguese come on the

3:35

scene Portuguese missionaries in

3:37

the sixteenth century, the empire is

3:40

thoroughly on its way out. The

3:42

kings of Anchor do come back for a little

3:44

bit in the sixteenth century, but

3:47

not for long. So we're wondering

3:49

what happened. But in the

3:51

meantime, Angor lies.

3:55

I don't want to say forgotten, because

3:57

Anchor Watt is maintained by um

4:00

monks and hermits, and it's

4:03

considered an important pilgrimage site in

4:05

Southeast Asia all through these sort

4:08

of down years. But I think

4:10

the um vastness

4:12

of the city of Anchor is

4:14

forgotten, at least ignored. Some

4:17

travelers who um quote unquote

4:20

discovered Anchor thought they'd found a lost

4:22

city founded by Alexandra the Great or the Roman

4:24

Empire. They knew nothing about it. But the

4:26

French colonial regime in Cambodia

4:29

uh found the site,

4:31

not found it, but they started getting interested

4:33

in it in the eighteen sixties

4:36

and they partially restored the temples

4:38

and the reservoirs and canals that lays

4:41

through this mammoth complex of anchor

4:43

and published a French

4:46

explorer Andri Muo

4:48

actually reintroduces the temples

4:50

to the West with a journal travels

4:53

in Siam, Cambodia and Laos and

4:56

to bring it up to the present time and the twentieth

4:58

century. Of course, there's a lot of war and

5:00

upheaval in Cambodia, and there's war

5:03

damage done to the site. There's theft,

5:05

but mostly a lot of neglect because it's

5:07

too dangerous of a place for most people to

5:09

go to. Yeah, and take care of it, right.

5:12

There's engulfing vegetation and erosion,

5:14

and Sarah made me look at pictures of strangler

5:16

figs, which are completely insane. Just

5:18

imagine um,

5:20

it's like a vine flash tree

5:23

just engulfing these

5:26

stone temples. It's ridiculous, So

5:28

google image that. Yeah, and in nineteen

5:30

two becomes a World Heritage Site, which is

5:32

a great step to preserving any

5:35

kind of cultural monument like this. And

5:38

by nine it was scammed

5:40

by the radar of space Shuttle Endeavor,

5:42

which turns out to be a very important

5:46

key to anchors understanding

5:50

later on in the podcast, because there's so much

5:52

more that we didn't know about. But let's

5:54

go back and figure out what Anchor was

5:57

like and why we should care about it. So

6:00

during the medieval times, the canear erected

6:02

thousands of shrines and Anchor and

6:04

went on a building spree. And

6:07

the city it's not just built

6:09

haphazardly. It's very much

6:12

tied to the Hindu idea of the universe.

6:15

The city of Ankor actually was

6:17

a symbolic universe itself

6:20

that was structured according to the Hindu

6:22

cosmology. So, for example,

6:24

the outer walls of the temples are

6:27

meant to recall mountains

6:29

that were believed to edge the world,

6:32

and the reservoirs and canals

6:34

and moats that lace through the cities are

6:36

meant to symbolize the waters of the cosmos.

6:39

So it's a pretty cool idea to

6:41

to model your city on the universe.

6:44

Yes, city planners take note. I'm pretty

6:46

sure Atlanta wasn't designed that, though I

6:48

don't think so. The temples weren't only

6:50

religious centers. They were also commercial centers,

6:52

and many of them operated as small cities,

6:55

while other ones as larger cities. There

6:57

were up to swhere around seven

7:00

in fifty thousand people in Anchor,

7:02

which was the capital of the Khmer Kingdom,

7:04

and it is the most extensive urban

7:06

complex of the pre industrial world,

7:09

so small accomplishment.

7:12

We only have one firsthand account,

7:14

though, of what Angor was

7:16

really like, and that's from Zo

7:18

Daguan, a Chinese diplomat

7:21

who visited at the end of the thirteenth

7:23

century, and you can find parts

7:25

of his account on Google Books if you searched

7:27

for it. But he discusses a

7:29

little bit about the city itself and some about

7:31

city life. He talks about entering the city

7:34

and there's a moat surrounding it with a border

7:36

of fifty four giants holding a snake.

7:39

There's a golden bridge, gilded lions,

7:41

a pavilion supported by stone elephants,

7:44

um a bronze Buddha in a lake

7:46

with water coming out of its belly button. We've

7:49

also got stories about fireworks

7:51

and bore fighting, royal

7:53

processions with elephants, horses

7:56

clad in gold, palace women and flowers.

7:59

It all sounds very a luxurious We shouldn't

8:02

only look at that side of the account, though. The

8:04

life for your average peasant in

8:06

Anger probably wasn't really great.

8:09

You would likely work really hard

8:11

on the temple because constant building

8:14

freeze require constant work

8:16

from peasants. Uh, you

8:19

grow a lot of rice to pay tributes

8:21

because the whole system

8:24

relied on rice's currency.

8:26

And you'd also probably be drafted into

8:29

war because there were constant

8:31

wars with the armies in Thailand

8:33

and Champa, which is Vietnam today.

8:36

But he also does talk a little bit about middle

8:38

class life. So that would be me and you, Sarah.

8:41

And the house he's staying at has matting

8:44

but no tables, chairs, or beds. They

8:46

cook rice over a clay stove and

8:48

they sit on mats and eat from ceramic plates

8:51

and drink wine from tin cups that's

8:53

made out of honey, rice leaves,

8:56

and water. They sleep on mats on the floor,

8:58

and apparently it's so hot people got during

9:00

the night to bathe, and a few

9:02

families all share a ditch as a latrine,

9:04

and when it's full, they would dig another one or have

9:06

a slave to it. Apparently wealthy

9:08

families had more than a hundred slaves each,

9:10

which they got from the uplands, and they spoke

9:13

came here, but they had no rights.

9:16

And the other thing I thought was really interesting

9:18

was what happened when two families fought.

9:20

They would take a member from each family and

9:23

stick them each in a tower, and then after

9:25

a certain period of time, you would get to come out of confinement

9:28

and they would look to see what sort

9:30

of ailments you'd had. You know, perhaps

9:32

you'd had a fever or some other sickness,

9:35

and that's how they determined who was guilty. It's

9:37

so weirdly passive. I

9:39

keep thinking of Funny Python and the Holy Grail because

9:42

I tried to apply that to most things. But you know,

9:44

I figure out whether she's a which, figure out who's guilty,

9:47

and the king's punishments could range from

9:49

a fine to crushing your limbs. So

9:52

I hope you weren't the one who got the fever. And

9:54

they also collected human

9:56

goal from I've read that too.

9:59

That was weird with the thought

10:01

to give both men and elephants

10:03

courage. And if you were a person

10:05

who needed courage, you could drink it mixed with wine. If

10:07

you were an elephant, you would have it poured over you

10:09

in a different mixture. But they had a commoner

10:12

way would be the best way to go. There

10:15

was someone who was supposed to drink, so

10:18

you know, human goal courage for elephants.

10:20

Things you learned, but Unfortunately, this amazing

10:23

account we have from Zoo is

10:26

that's it. We have things that were

10:28

carved on the stone temples,

10:30

but all of the administrative buildings and

10:33

the homes from the highest

10:35

person to the lowest were made of

10:37

wood, and consequently you haven't survived.

10:40

So we have very little to go on when

10:42

we're trying to figure out how ankor

10:45

fell. What happened, and the

10:47

historically suspected causes are

10:50

invaders, religion changes,

10:53

maritime trade kind of shuts

10:55

down the coastal city, and

10:57

um, so we have to get

11:00

us, which is one of those use your own ending

11:02

podcast. We're going to give you some

11:04

options and you can pick what you

11:07

think makes the most sense. So one

11:09

option is rivalry. The Canary kings

11:12

each had a few wives and several

11:14

children, and so there were constant battles

11:16

over which baby would be the king, and

11:19

plenty of usurpers to the throne. As

11:21

Sarah said, it was like the War of the Roses

11:23

times Azilian. Imagine

11:26

just never knowing who was going to be the next

11:28

king. That puts a lot of no clear line of

11:30

succession. Yeah, and then

11:33

another potential problem was

11:35

war. Some think that the warriors

11:37

from the Iataiah state sacked Anchor

11:39

in and

11:42

they did invade the city and

11:44

made off with a lot of treasure in women, but

11:47

they probably didn't completely

11:49

destroy the city. Well, obviously

11:51

they didn't completely destroy We have some less um,

11:54

they didn't damage it severely,

11:56

And some historians think that's

11:59

unlikely because as the ruler of

12:01

the Aetayah installs his son on

12:03

the throne, So why would you completely

12:06

sack the city and destroy

12:08

most of it if you're installing your son on the

12:10

throne. And that brings us to option

12:13

three, which is religion. Anthropologists

12:16

call Anchor the regal ritual city. They

12:18

love religion, it's a big part of their daily

12:20

lives, and the kings are the world emperors

12:22

of Hindu lore. But by the thirteenth

12:25

and fourteen centuries, Terravada Buddhism

12:27

starts to surpass Hinduism,

12:29

and it preaches social quality, which

12:32

isn't something that was a big part of life in Anchor.

12:35

So perhaps slaving away at growing

12:38

rice just to give it to the king for his um

12:40

gilded elephant processions doesn't

12:42

sounds so appealing anymore. No, it really didn't,

12:45

because that whole regal ritual thing

12:47

relied on tribute and taxes,

12:49

so you were paying for these insanely

12:52

luxurious ceremony and as we already

12:54

said, the currency is rice, so you're

12:57

growing huge amounts of rice

12:59

to feed priests and the dancers

13:02

and the concubine, yeah, the temple

13:04

workers. And it just, uh, this

13:07

is a plausible explanation for

13:09

why this society would collapse bolts.

13:12

But we have another option. That's

13:14

that it was just plain abandoned, that

13:17

the royal court ditched the city.

13:19

And this is plausible because

13:21

the rulers were obsessed with building

13:24

their own new temples, they wouldn't

13:26

take care of the old ones. Most of our kind

13:29

of cultural monuments, at least

13:31

public monuments, there is a certain amount of

13:34

upkeep and um,

13:36

and you know people people

13:38

like things that are old. But that

13:41

was not the case with the Anchor

13:43

rulers. You knew they would just let

13:45

the old ones fall into into decay. Kind

13:48

of reminded me a little bit about the

13:50

It kind of reminded me a little bit of the Egyptian

13:53

pharaoh's pilfering the rocks

13:55

from the old pyramids and stuff.

13:58

But so it's possible that

14:00

the rulers just left

14:03

the town headed to a location

14:05

closer to the Mekong River, which

14:08

is near Cambodia's modern capital

14:10

of PanAm Pen, and

14:13

that way they could have easier sea trading

14:15

and um,

14:17

just move on with the times. But

14:20

there is an even more modern theory,

14:22

which is water trouble. The

14:25

empire's growth depended on huge

14:27

rice harvests, and to do that, of

14:29

course, you need a steady water supply.

14:32

And we mentioned earlier how good it engineering

14:35

this particular empire was, but

14:38

it wasn't just engineering amazing

14:41

tempo complexes and things

14:43

to worship their rulers and gods.

14:45

We were talking about all the canals and

14:47

the reservoirs, and that does

14:50

more than symbolize the Hindu

14:52

cosmology of oceans

14:54

and water. They also

14:57

were legitimate reservoirs and

15:00

the uh. There's a great article

15:02

in the National Geographic from a few months

15:05

back by Richard Stone which

15:07

puts forth the idea that the

15:10

civilization rose because

15:12

they figured out a way to manage

15:15

the monsoon season, which

15:17

you know, it's kind of an on or off rain

15:19

switch, right, And once you're not dependent

15:21

on the weather like that, you have

15:23

time to do things like build great civilizations.

15:25

Yeah, because you can increase your rice yields.

15:28

You can grow during times of year where

15:30

you normally wouldn't be able to grow rice. And

15:33

so this theory suggests that they rose to prominence

15:35

because they figured out

15:38

how to manipulate this, and that maybe

15:40

they fell because they lost

15:42

that control. They built one

15:45

reservoir you talked about. I think that's what

15:47

five miles long by one and a half miles

15:49

wide the Westbury. Yeah, these aren't

15:52

huge. If you see a picture of it,

15:55

it I mean, I

15:57

can't even compare it to a pool

16:00

or something like that. It looks like a lake,

16:02

except that it's perfectly rectangular.

16:05

And here's how it worked. During the summer

16:07

monsoon months, the overflow channels

16:10

took care of the excess water to

16:12

save it for later. The rain stopped in October

16:14

November, and the irrigation channels dispensed

16:16

the stored water. So, yeah, you can

16:19

grow rice when you shouldn't be able

16:21

to, and you're not

16:23

going to be quite as flooded as you normally

16:25

would be during the monsoon season. And

16:28

one of the ways that we figured out

16:31

how these reservoirs worked, where

16:33

those NOWSA images we were talking about or

16:36

endeavor, and they were great because

16:38

they showed areas that were still

16:40

inaccessible because of violence and

16:43

Cambodia or just lawlessness

16:45

in certain areas. And the

16:47

images showed that the berets

16:49

or these big reservoirs had inlets and

16:52

outlets, so that proved that

16:54

they were for irrigation, they

16:56

weren't just for religious purposes. But

16:59

by the early thirteenth century,

17:01

the waterworks began to deteriorate, and

17:04

we're not quite sure why that happened.

17:06

It might have been that floods broke some

17:08

of the masonry, or it just became

17:11

two massive a system for the engineers

17:13

to handle. You can kind of think of Atlanta's

17:15

own sewer system, which

17:18

a massive overhaul. Yeah, there's

17:20

there's not much you can do about it unless

17:23

you embark on a massive

17:25

overhaul, and they might have not been equipped

17:28

to do that, as we're not either.

17:30

But um, the thirteenth

17:33

century surprised people because it

17:35

was a little early for the trouble to

17:37

start. If you're paying attention to the timeline anchor

17:39

was still around in the sixteenth century. Yeah,

17:42

but here's what suspected to have happened.

17:45

So while the waterworks are

17:47

in disrepair. That's

17:50

a problem, but maybe manageable

17:53

if you still have a regular monsoon season.

17:56

But unfortunately their disrepair

17:58

coincides perfectly with

18:01

the beginning of the Little

18:03

Ice Age, and that's something that people

18:05

have long known happened in Europe starting

18:08

in and going on for a couple

18:10

of centuries. It contributed to really

18:13

abnormally cold winters and

18:16

unseasonably cold summers,

18:19

and but until recently

18:21

people didn't know if this also extended

18:23

to Asia, and it definitely

18:26

did, and it made Anchor experience

18:28

these mega droughts. Sometimes there was no monsoon

18:31

at all, sometimes there was huge monsoon.

18:33

Basically nothing you can plan against, and if

18:35

you're already falling apart, you're not equipped to handle

18:37

it. So if you have an unstable monsoon

18:40

season and um

18:43

water works that are failing, you can't

18:45

guarantee a harvest. And we know

18:48

that the Little Ice Age did hit Asia

18:50

in part because of Poemu. I

18:53

think that's how you say it. Cypress tree rings.

18:55

Um. Some of these trees are nine centuries

18:58

old, so they were around

19:00

in the height of anger and in

19:02

its fall, and they show stress,

19:06

like major stress from the

19:08

monsoons. Heavy monsoons, no monsoons,

19:11

and of course with all of this water trouble,

19:13

we end up with a low rice yield, which

19:16

could lead to starving turmoil,

19:18

a week army and so on. And so

19:20

that's why they choose your own ending. Any

19:23

of them could really be right because we can have

19:25

this water centered

19:28

answer. But if your people are

19:30

starving because there's no water to grow

19:32

rice, or you know, you're flooded

19:35

out and you can't grow rice, um

19:38

your army is underfed, you're more susceptible

19:40

to the Iataia invaders.

19:43

And it kind of ties

19:45

all the all the endings together in an

19:48

interesting way. And there's another environmental

19:51

theory about environmental degradation causing

19:53

the fall of Anchor, which was about deforestation

19:56

and over using the land, which some people

19:58

think led to flood and silted

20:00

canals, which are really no good. Yeah, if you

20:02

silt silt up your water works, they're

20:05

not going to really do you any good anymore.

20:07

Well, all of these possibilities are interesting

20:10

to ponder. Hopefully we'll have a chance

20:12

to figure out the real answer. Now that Cambodia

20:15

is open for tourism. Yeah,

20:17

it's actually a big source of money for

20:19

Cambodia. Now, which you

20:21

know couldn't really have much of a tourist trade

20:24

for decades because of war and internal

20:26

strife. But um unfortunately

20:29

the tourism also threatens

20:31

the structural integrity of the temples. There's

20:33

always a double down. But the

20:35

same thing about POMPEII. We're reading about people coming

20:37

to see POMPEII and then touching every Yeah, they're

20:39

winning it. Erosion problems from just

20:41

physical contact, but also

20:44

new resorts and hotels springing

20:46

up are supposedly

20:48

sucking the groundwater dry beneath

20:51

Ancor, which weakened some of the

20:53

foundations of the buildings. And if

20:55

you're looking to go loot some antiquities,

20:57

there actually aren't many left after

20:59

sent reads of people doing so. Some are

21:01

in France and some are in Cambodia's

21:04

National Museum very far away. Well,

21:06

I for one, would definitely like to visit

21:08

Anchor and Anchor Watt and the

21:10

whole Shabang. So would I, and

21:13

I think it would be a lot easier to visit than Atlantis,

21:15

considering we don't know where it is, or the north

21:17

to Chico, considering that they're gone. Well,

21:19

I think that about wraps it up, unless we

21:21

think of any more lost cities

21:23

to talk of in the future, So if you'd

21:25

like to read more, check out our article

21:28

five abandoned Cities, and don't

21:30

forget to check out our blog, which you can find

21:32

on the homepage at www dot

21:34

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