Archaeologists report that 700,000-900,000 people lived in Cambodia’s medieval Greater Angkor region.
The sprawling tropical city, which covered 3,000 square kilometers (1,158 square miles), thrived from the 9th to the 15th centuries before being abandoned, possibly due to climate change.
The paper, which combines more than 30 years of data with recent airborne lidar sensing, appears in the journal
Knowing the population and how it was distributed is vital for potentially helping cities now under climate pressures, says coauthor Roland Fletcher of the University of Sydney and head of the Angkor Research Program.
“We predominantly are living in giant, low-density cities around the world that are similar to Angkor, which displayed serious vulnerability to severe climate change,” Fletcher says. “We really need to know the mechanics of how Angkor worked and what people were doing to get some idea of how referable those experiences are to the risks that we face in our future.
The Ancient City of Angkor Wat Had a Population Larger Than Modern-Day Boston, According to New Archaeological Research
Using LiDAR and machine learning, archaeologists estimate the population in the Greater Angkor Region may have hit 900,000.
May 10, 2021
The face towers at the Bayon Temple are a well-known feature of the downtown area of the greater Angkor region. Photo by Alison Carter, courtesy of the University of Oregon.
The massive temple complex that is Cambodia’s Angkor Wat is famed as the world’s largest religious monument. Now, researchers have determined the city’s population at its zenith in the 13th century, and the number is impressive: some 700,000 to 900,000 people likely called the Angkor region home, making it one of the world’s largest pre-modern cities. Compare that with the 2019 estimated population for Boston, at 692,600.
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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.
Date Time
Angkor region was actually a large Medieval city
The Greater Angkor Region in contemporary Cambodia was dramatically more urbanized in the 13th century than previously thought, and home to 700.000 to 900.000 people. These discoveries were made by a research team led by Sarah Klassen. Their findings are published in Science Advances.
“The level of urbanism at the medieval Khmer site was pretty unique for the world at the time”
The Greater Angkor Region in Cambodia is known for Angkor Wat, one of the largest monumental temple complexes in the world. By combining several datasets and using new technologies such as Lidar mapping and machine learning algorithms, a research group lead by Sarah Klassen uncovered spectacular new facts about the region as a whole. “We now have data showing that the region, at its height in the 13th century, was home to 700.000 to 900.000 people. The diachronic maps also show the level of urbanism at the medieval Khmer site was pretty uniqu
Study Estimates Population Growth at Angkor Wat
LEIDEN, NETHERLANDS
Gizmodoreports that Sarah Klassen of the University of Leiden and Alison Carter of the University of Oregon employed recent lidar surveys, excavation data, radiocarbon dates, historical documents, and a machine learning algorithm to estimate the population of Angkor Wat, the capital of Cambodia’s Khmer Empire from the ninth to the fifteenth century A.D. The lidar survey revealed mounds otherwise concealed by heavy vegetation. The researchers estimated that five people lived in a dwelling built on each mound, based upon the excavation of similar mounds surrounding the temple at Angkor Wat. Dating the mounds allowed the scientists to estimate population density and growth over time. “I was amazed by the level of chronological and geographic demographic detail we were able to achieve by combining all these different datasets into a cohesive framework,” Klassen said. At its peak in the thirteenth century,