The Khmer’s mastery over the natural landscape was perhaps their greatest achievement, and the lidar mapping has exposed complex levels of terraforming and water management systems that were way ahead of any other settlement of the era.
Once again, earlier archaeological studies focused on the symbolic role of water in Angkor’s cosmological order, reading the vast reservoirs as symbols of the mythological oceans surrounding Mount Meru, home of the Hindu gods. While the watercourses evidently played a part in the sacred geography of the city, they were fundamentally there to irrigate the rice fields, the source of the empire’s great wealth. Success in a tropical climate ultimately depended on the ability to mitigate flooding during the summer monsoon and store enough water to irrigate the fields during dry season – something the Khmer rulers had clearly mastered.
Residential neighbourhoods were arranged around thousands of communal rainfall ponds, while the fields were irrigated by a pair of great reservoirs, or “barays”, the whole system connected by an extensive network of canals and channels. The West Baray, which stretches five miles by one mile to the west of downtown Angkor, remains the largest hand-cut body of water on earth. Contained by tall earthen dikes, it stands as the pinnacle of the Khmer ability to harness the landscape for its own ends.
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- Lost cities #7: how Nasa technology uncovered the 'megacity' of Angkor, Thursday, August 18, 2016 - 11:56