Map yields new view of ancient city
By Bruce Bower
An international team of scientists has assembled a map of the world’s largest preindustrial city, the sprawling settlement of Angkor in what’s now Cambodia. The new map shows that Angkor’s ruins cover more than 1,000 square kilometers, including areas outside boundaries that have been established to protect the archaeological site.
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It’s now evident that an elaborate canal system once supplied water throughout Angkor, say Damian Evans of the University of Sydney in Australia and his colleagues. Although the city prospered for 6 centuries and reached a peak population of nearly 1 million residents, its reliance on canals for water led to its collapse in the 1500s, the researchers contend.