5. The Khmer Empire - Fall of the God Kings

Fall of Civilizations Podcast

History

4.9 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2019

⏱️ 99 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Deep in the Cambodian Jungle, a ruined city crumbles among the roots of banyan trees. In this episode, we look at the history of the Khmer Empire of medieval Cambodia, and the ancient mega-city of Angkor. I want to explore how this great civilization rose to a size and wealth virtually unprecedented in the world, how it overcame the challenges of its climate and landscape, and all the factors that led to its final, dramatic collapse. Credits: Sound engineering by Thomas Ntinas Voice Actors: Rhy Brignell Lou Millington Sebastian Garbacz Music by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-fre…isrc=USUAN1100209 Artist: incompetech.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the year 1586, towards the end of the 16th century, a Portuguese missionary called Antonio
0:26.6	de Magdalena was part of a group exploring the deeply forested interior of Cambodia. They
0:34.5	travelled through the soupi heat of the Cambodian jungle, surrounded by the fluttering of banana
0:40.3	palms and the chattering of cicadas. Their Cambodian guides had told them that the ruins of an
0:47.0	enormous city lay somewhere here in the jungle, but they didn't know the scale and grandeur of what
0:53.7	awaited them. Magdalena was killed soon after in a shipwreck, but before he died, he managed to
1:01.6	relate to a friend who wrote down all that he saw of these sprawling ruins in the jungle.
1:10.2	The city is square, with four principal gates and a fifth which serves the royal palace.
1:17.1	The gates of each entrance are magnificently sculpted, so perfect that they look as if they were made
1:25.0	from one stone. In the middle of the city is an extraordinary temple. The missionaries were
1:33.5	astonished. This city was grander and more magnificent than anything they had ever seen back home in
1:40.8	Europe. Great Banyan trees and creeper vines clambered over the ruins. The city seemed completely
1:49.1	abandoned, but here and there, Buddhist monks in Tangerine robes still performed rituals among its
1:56.4	crumbling shrines. Half a league from this city is a temple. It is of such extraordinary construction
2:07.0	that it is not possible to describe it with a pen. It is like no other building in the world.
2:15.1	It has towers and decorations and all the refinements which human genius can conceive of.
2:25.4	Amazed at the sight, the Portuguese asked their guides a flurry of questions
2:31.1	who had built this place, how had they constructed such vast works of architectural genius,
2:37.8	and why after everything they had built had they left it all behind. But the guides didn't know.
2:45.8	They said only what their parents had passed down to them, that these great stone
2:50.6	edifices had been built here over a period of centuries by more than 20 kings.
2:56.8	The Portuguese asked what the name of this great metropolis had been, but the guides didn't know
	...

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