Unearthing an Origin Story for Gentrification
Updated at 9:53 a.m. ET on May 12, 2021.
Historians have always assumed that the medieval city of Angkor, today located in Cambodia, was huge, simply based on how much land its kings commanded. From the ninth to the 15th centuries, Angkor was the capital of the Khmer empire, which at its zenith stretched across modern Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. The city was thronged with visitors from all over Southeast Asia—royalty and peasants alike—and was home to large numbers of farmers who kept the city fed, as well as workers who built its palaces, canals, and reservoirs. But precisely how many people lived in Angkor is one of the enduring mysteries in archaeology.
The problem is that, centuries after the city’s decline, only the great walled
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