Level 5 Reading 1B

Reading 1B

阅读1B

THE COLLAPSE OF ANGKOR After rising to sublime heights, the sacred city may have engineered its own downfall. An Empire's Fall Almost hidden amid the forests of northern Cambodia is the scene of one of the greatest vanishing acts of all time. This was once the heart of the Khmer kingdom. At its height, the Khmer Empire dominated much of Southeast Asia, from Myanmar (Burma) in the west to Vietnam in the east. As many as 750,000 people lived in Angkor, its magnificent capital. The most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world, Angkor stretched across an area the size of New York City. Its greatest temple, Angkor Wat, is the world's largest religious monument even today. Yet when the first Europeans arrived in Angkor in the late 16th century, they found a city that was already dying Scholars have come up with a list of suspected causes for Angkor's decline, including foreign invaders, a religious change of heart, and a shift to maritime trade. But it's mostly guesswork: Roughly 1,300 inscriptions survive on temple doors and monuments, but the people of Angkor left not a single word explaining their kingdom's collapse. Some scholars assume that Angkor died the way it lived: by the sword. The historical records of Ayutthaya, a neighboring state, claim that warriors from that kingdom "took" Angkor in 1431. No doubt Angkor would have been a rich prize— inscriptions boast that its temple towers were covered with gold. After its rediscovery by Western travelers just over a century ago, historians deduced from Angkor's ruins that the city had been looted by invaders from Ayutthaya. Roland Fletcher, co-director of a research effort called the Greater Angkor Project, is not convinced. Some early scholars, he says, viewed Angkor according to the sieges and conquests of European history. "The ruler of Ayutthaya, indeed. says he took Angkor, and he may have taken some formal regalia back to Ayutthaya with him," says Fletcher. But after Angkor was captured, Ayutthaya's ruler placed his son on the throne. "Hes not likely to have smashed the place up before giving it to his son." A religious shift may also have contributed to the citys decline. Angkors kings claimed to be the world emperors of Hindu mythology and erected temples to themselves. But in the 13th and 14th centuries, Theravada Buddhism gradually took over from Hinduism, and its principles of social equality may have threatened Angkor's elite. "It was very subversive, just like Christianity was subversive to the Roman Empire," says Fletcher.

吴哥窟的倒塌 在达到崇高的高度后，这座神圣的城市可能已经策划了自己的衰落。 帝国的衰落 几乎隐藏在柬埔寨北部的森林中 是有史以来最伟大的消失行为之一的场景。 这里曾经是高棉王国的中心。 在鼎盛时期，高棉帝国统治着东南亚的大部分地区， 从西部的缅甸到东部的越南。 多达75万人居住在其宏伟的首都吴哥窟。 工业化前世界最广泛的城市综合体， 吴哥窟的面积相当于纽约市。 它最大的寺庙吴哥窟，即使在今天也是世界上最大的宗教纪念碑。 然而，当第一批欧洲人在16世纪末抵达吴哥窟时， 他们发现了一座已经奄奄一息的城市 学者们列出了吴哥窟衰落的可疑原因， 包括外国侵略者、宗教信仰的转变以及向海上贸易的转变。 但这主要是猜测： 寺庙门和纪念碑上大约有1300个铭文， 但吴哥窟的人民没有留下一句话来解释他们王国的崩溃。 一些学者认为吴哥窟是以它的生活方式死去的：死于刀剑。 邻近州大城府的历史记录， 声称1431年，该王国的战士“占领”了吴哥窟。 毫无疑问，吴哥窟将是一个丰厚的奖品-- 碑文上吹嘘它的庙宇塔楼被金子覆盖着。 一个多世纪前，西方旅行者重新发现了它， 历史学家从吴哥窟的废墟推断出，这座城市曾被大城府的入侵者洗劫一空。 罗兰·弗莱彻（Roland Fletcher）是一项名为“大吴哥项目”的研究工作的联合主任，他对此并不信服。 他说，一些早期的学者， 根据欧洲历史上的围攻和征服来看待吴哥窟。 “大城府的统治者说他占领了吴哥窟， 弗莱彻说：“他可能把一些正式的王权带回了大城府。”。 但吴哥窟被攻陷后，大城府的统治者让他的儿子登上了王位。 “他不太可能在把房子给儿子之前就把它砸了。” 宗教的转变也可能导致了这座城市的衰落。 吴哥王自称是印度教神话中的世界皇帝，并为自己建造了寺庙。 但在13世纪和14世纪， 小乘佛教逐渐取代了印度教， 它的社会平等原则可能威胁到了吴哥窟的精英。 弗莱彻说：“这非常具有颠覆性，就像基督教对罗马帝国具有颠覆性一样。”。

A new religion that promoted ideas of social equality might have led to a worker rebellion. The city operated on a moneyless economy, relying on tribute and taxation, and the kingdom's main currency was rice. For one temple complex, Ta Prohm, more than 66,000 farmers produced nearly 3,000 tons of rice a year, which was then used to feed the temple's priests, dancers, and workers. Scholars estimate that farm laborers comprised nearly half of Greater Angkor's population. Or maybe the royal court simply turned its back on Angkor. Angkor's rulers often erected new temple complexes and let older ones decay. This may have doomed the city when sea trade began to develop between Southeast Asia and China. Maybe it was simple economic opportunism that had caused the Klumer center of power to shift: The move to a location closer to the Mekong River, near Cambodia's present-day capital, Phnom Penh, allowed it easier access to the sea. Economic and religious changes may have contributed to Angkors downfall, but its rulers faced another foe. Angkor was powerful largely thanks to an advanced system of canals and reservoirs, which enabled the city to keep scarce water in dry months and disperse excess water during the rainy season. But forces beyond Angkor's control would eventually bring an end to this carefully constructed system. Few ancient sites in southern Asia could compare to Angkor in its ability to guarantee a steady water supply. The first scholar to appreciate the scale of Angkor's waterworks was French archeologist Bernard-Philippe Groslier. In 1979, he argued that the great reservoirs served two purposes: to symbolize the Hindu cosmos and to irrigate the rice fields. Unfortunately, Groslier could not pursue his ideas further. Cambodia's civil war, the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge, and the subsequent arrival of Vietnamese forces in 1979 turned Angkor into a no-go zone for two decades. In the 1990s, Christophe Pottier followed up on Groslier's ideas and discovered that the south part of Angkor was a vast landscape of housing, water tanks, shrines, roads, and canals. Then,in 2000, Roland Fletcher and his colleague Damian Evans— as part of a collaborative study with Pottier—viewed some NASA radar images of Angkor. The researchers marveled at the sophistication of Angkor's infrastructure. "We realized that the entire landscape of Greater Angkor is artificial," Fletcher says. Teams of laborers constructed hundreds of kilometers of canals and dikes that diverted water from the rivers to the reservoirs. Overflow channels bled off excess water that accumulated during the summer monsoon months, and after the monsoon,irrigation channels dispensed the stored water. "It was an incredibly clever system," says Fletcher. Fletcher was therefore baffled when his team made a surprising discovery. An extraordinary piece of Angkorian workmanship— a vast structure in the waterworks—had been destroyed, apparently by Angkor's own engineers. "The most logical explanation is that the dam failed," Fletcher says. The river may have begun to erode the dam, or perhaps it was washed away by a flood. The Khmer broke apart the remaining stonework and modified the blocks for other purposes. Any weakening of the waterworks would have left the city vulnerable to a natural phenomenon that none of Angkor's engineers could have predicted. Starting in the 1300s, it appears that Southeast Asia experienced a period of extreme climate change, which also affected other parts of the world. In Europe, which endured centuries of harsh winters and cool summers, it was known as the Little Ice Age. To an already weakened kingdom, extreme weather would have been the final blow. "We don't know why the water system was operating below capacity," says Daniel Penny, co-director of the Greater Angkor Project. "But what it means is that Angkor... was more exposed to the threat of drought than at any other time in its history." If inhabitants of parts of Angkor were starving while other parts of the city were hoarding a finite quantity of rice, the most likely result was social instability. "When populations in tropical countries exceed the carrying capacity of the land, real trouble begins," says Yale University anthropologist Michael Coe, "and this inevitably leads to cultural collapse." A hungry army weakened by internal problems would have exposed the city to attack. Indeed, Ayutthaya's invasion happened near the end of a long period of drought. Add to the climate chaos the political and religious changes already affecting the kingdom, and Angkor's prospects were bleak, says Fletcher. "The world around Angkor was changing; society was moving on. It would have been a surprise if Angkor persisted." The Khmer Empire was not the first civilization brought down by climate catastrophe. Centuries earlier, loss of environmental stability likewise brought down another powerful kingdom halfway around the world. Many scholars now believe that the fall of the Maya followed a series of droughts in the ninth century. "Essentially, the same thing happened to Angkor," says Coe. In the end, the tale of Angkor is a lesson in the limits of human ingenuity. " Angkor's hydraulic system was an amazing machine, a wonderful mechanism for regulating the world," Fletcher says. Its engineers managed to keep the civilization's achievement running for six centuries— until a greater force overwhelmed them.

一种促进社会平等思想的新宗教 可能会导致工人叛乱。 这座城市实行无钱经济， 依靠贡品和税收，王国的主要货币是大米。 对于塔普伦的一座寺庙建筑群， 66000多名农民每年生产近3000吨大米， 然后，它被用来养活寺庙的牧师、舞者和工人。 学者们估计，大吴哥窟的人口中，农场工人几乎占一半。 或者，也许皇室只是背弃了吴哥窟。 吴哥的统治者经常建造新的寺庙建筑群，让旧的寺庙衰败。 当东南亚和中国之间的海上贸易开始发展时，这可能注定了这座城市的命运。 也许这只是简单的经济机会主义 这导致了克鲁默权力中心的转变： 搬到离湄公河更近的地方， 靠近柬埔寨现在的首都金边，使其更容易出海。 经济和宗教的变化可能导致了吴哥的垮台， 但它的统治者面临着另一个敌人。 吴哥窟之所以强大，很大程度上要归功于先进的运河和水库系统， 这使得该市能够在干旱的月份保持缺水 在雨季分散多余的水。 但吴哥窟无法控制的力量最终会带来终结 对于这个精心构建的系统。 南亚很少有古代遗址 在保证稳定供水的能力方面，可以与吴哥窟相媲美。 第一位了解吴哥窟水利规模的学者 是法国考古学家伯纳德·菲利普·格罗斯勒。 1979年，他认为大水库有两个目的： 象征印度教宇宙，灌溉稻田。 不幸的是，Groslier无法进一步推进他的想法。 柬埔寨的内战，红色高棉的残暴政权， 随后，越南军队于1979年抵达，将吴哥窟变成了20年的禁区。 20世纪90年代，克里斯托夫·波蒂尔（Christophe Pottier）延续了格罗斯勒的想法 并发现吴哥窟的南部 这里是一片广阔的土地，有住房、水箱、神社、道路和运河。 然后，在2000年，罗兰·弗莱彻和他的同事达米安·埃文斯-- 作为与Pottier合作研究的一部分，查看了一些美国国家航空航天局的吴哥雷达图像。 研究人员对吴哥窟复杂的基础设施感到惊讶。 弗莱彻说：“我们意识到大吴哥的整个景观都是人工的。”。 工人们建造了数百公里的运河和堤坝 把河水引到水库。 溢流渠道排出了夏季季风期间积聚的多余水， 季风过后，灌溉渠道分配了储存的水。 弗莱彻说：“这是一个非常聪明的系统。”。 因此，当弗莱彻的团队有了一个惊人的发现时，他感到很困惑。 一件非凡的吴哥工艺-- 显然，吴哥窟自己的工程师摧毁了水厂中的一座巨大建筑。 弗莱彻说：“最合乎逻辑的解释是大坝倒塌了。”。 这条河可能已经开始侵蚀大坝，或者可能被洪水冲走了。 高棉人拆开了剩下的石雕，并出于其他目的对石块进行了修改。 供水设施的任何削弱都会使这座城市容易受到自然现象的影响 这是吴哥窟的工程师们无法预测的。 从13世纪开始，东南亚似乎经历了一段极端气候变化时期， 这也影响了世界其他地区。 在经历了几个世纪的严冬和凉爽夏季的欧洲， 它被称为小冰河时代。 对于一个已经衰弱的王国来说，极端天气将是最后的打击。 丹尼尔·彭尼说：“我们不知道为什么供水系统在容量以下运行。”， 大吴哥项目联合主任。 “但这意味着吴哥窟…更容易受到干旱的威胁 比其历史上任何时候都要多。" 如果吴哥窟部分地区的居民正在挨饿 当城市的其他地区囤积有限数量的大米时， 最有可能的结果是社会不稳定。 “当热带国家的人口超过土地的承载能力时， 真正的麻烦开始了，”耶鲁大学人类学家Michael Coe说， “这不可避免地会导致文化崩溃。” 一支因内部问题而削弱的饥饿军队将使这座城市面临攻击。 事实上，大城府的入侵发生在长期干旱即将结束之际。 政治和宗教变化加剧了气候混乱 弗莱彻说，吴哥窟的前景已经很黯淡。 “吴哥周围的世界正在发生变化；社会正在向前发展。 如果吴哥窟继续存在，那将是一个惊喜。" 高棉帝国并不是第一个被气候灾难摧毁的文明。 几个世纪前，环境稳定性的丧失也是如此 在半个地球的另一端推翻了另一个强大的王国。 许多学者现在认为，玛雅人的灭亡是在九世纪的一系列干旱之后发生的。 科说：“基本上，吴哥窟也发生了同样的事情。”。 最后，吴哥窟的故事是人类智慧极限的一个教训。 " 吴哥窟的液压系统是一台神奇的机器， 弗莱彻说：“这是一个调节世界的奇妙机制。”。 它的工程师们设法让文明的成就持续了六个世纪-- 直到一股更强大的力量压倒了他们。

♪

♪