© Kevin Krajick/Earth Institute, Columbia UniversityTree-ring scientist Brendan Buckley of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory extracts a core of wood from an ancient fokienia hodginsii tree in Bidoup Nuiba National Park, Vietnam.
Decades of drought, interspersed with intense monsoon rains, may have helped bring about the fall of Cambodia's ancient Khmer civilization at Angkor nearly 600 years ago, according to an analysis of tree rings, archeological remains and other evidence. The study, published this week in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may also shed light on what drives - and disrupts - the rainy season across much of Asia, which waters crops for nearly half the world's population.
Historians have offered various explanations for the fall of an empire that stretched across much of Southeast Asia between the 9th and 14th centuries, from deforestation to conflict with rival kingdoms. But the new study offers the strongest evidence yet that two severe droughts, punctuated by bouts of heavy monsoon rain, may have weakened the empire by shrinking water supplies for drinking and agriculture, and damaging Angkor's vast irrigation system, which was central to its economy. The kingdom is thought to have collapsed in 1431 after a raid by the Siamese from present-day Thailand. The carved stone temples of its religious center, Angkor Wat, are today a major tourist destination, but much of the rest of the civilization has sunk back into the landscape.
Comment: The administration has promised to spend $2 billion upgrading the Kennedy Space Center. How convenient for private enterprise to get a $2 billion upgrade at the taxpayers' expense! Ah, yes, the industrial-military complex - no budget deficits for them! Oh heck! What's another $500 million on top of the $2.5 billion needed to shut it all down! God knows we sure wouldn't want to use that money for something on the order of, say, health care!