Ancient Cambodian city revealed by radar.

August 14 2007 at 12:55AM

Chicago - Archaeologists using radar
imagery have shown that an ancient Cambodian
settlement centred on the celebrated temple
of Angkor Wat was far more extensive than
previously thought, a study released on
Monday said.

The medieval settlement surrounding
Angkor, the one-time capital of the
illustrious Khmer empire which flourished
between the ninth and 14th centuries, covered
a 3 000 square kilometre area.

The urban complex was at least three
times larger than archaeologists had
previously suspected and easily the largest
pre-industrial urban area of its kind,
eclipsing comparable developments such as
Tikal a Classic Maya "city" in Guatemala.

Archaeologists have been trying to map
the boundaries of the sprawling agricultural
environs of Angkor in Siem Reap province
since the 1950s, but the ancient remains have
been subsumed by modern residential and
agricultural developments, complicating the
task.

So in 2000, a group of archaeologists
from Australia, France and Cambodia who were
working on the project turned to the US space
agency Nasa for help.

The agency obliged, providing radar
images of the terrain that distinguished the
contours of the landscape under the surface
of the Earth, identifying the location of
roads, canals and ponds surrounding temples.

When the researchers combined the data
with aerial photography and ground surveys,
they were able to identify several thousand
ponds and 74 long-lost temples.

The researchers concluded the complex
irrigation network that provided the basis
for the settlement's rice agricultural
extended 20-25 kilometres out from Angkor
city, to the north and south to the border of
Lake Tonle Sap.

The roads and canals, the defining
features of the area, demonstrated that the
urban settlement extended far beyond the
walls of Angkor - a World Heritage site home
to Angkor Wat and other renowned temples.

The settlement could have supported a
population of up to half a million people,
although there were signs that some of the
terrain was sparsely populated, said Damian
Evans, a graduate student in the archaeology
department at Sydney University and author of
the paper.

The study also yielded clues to support
the theory that environmental disaster was
the cause of the civilisation's collapse in
the 14th century, Evans said.

"We saw signs that embankments had been
breached and of ad hoc repairs to bridges and
dams, suggesting that the system became
unmanageable over time.

"Angkor was extensive enough, and the
agricultural exploitation intensive enough,
to have created a number of very serious
environmental problems," he said.

Deforestation, over population, topsoil
erosion and degradation with subsequent
sedimentation or flooding could have been
disastrous for the medieval population, he
said.

The paper appears in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.



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