Researchers Using Tree-ring Science to Find Lost City of Angkor

Columbia tree-ring scientists journey to a remote forest in Cambodia to search for clues about the demise of a lost civilization. by David J. Craig Published Spring 2011 - I n the Cardamom Mountains of southwest Cambodia, the rain forest grows thick. During monsoon season, a canopy of phayom, rosewood, pinang baik, and white meranti trees blocks out the sun. At night, the forest emits its own soft orange light, as hunters burn campfires to ward off elephants. 'It's seriously rough country, a wild and beautiful place,? says Brendan M. Buckley, a Columbia scientist who led a research expedition here in January. 'You move slowly, bashing and slashing your way through the vegetation.' Buckley is here because he thinks these woods, which are among the most remote in Asia, hold secrets to the disappearance of a city that once existed in the jungle some 100 miles north of the mountains. This was the city of Angkor, which, at its pinnacle in the 12th century, was home to 750,000 people and covered some 400 square miles - the largest footprint of any urban development in the preindustrialized world. Its workers built gigantic Hindu temples out of sandstone and planted rice paddies that stretched far over the horizon. Its engineers created dams and reservoirs to irrigate crops, even waterways to travel around the settlement by boat. And then this civilization vanished. By the time Portuguese missionaries arrived in the 16th century, the city had been largely abandoned and its temples enshrouded in vegetation. What happened to Angkor?