Lost City of Angkor Wat | Lost Temples

In Southeast Asia, an abandoned city sprawls magnificently across the heart of Cambodia. Its hundreds of monuments contain more stone than the Egyptian pyramids and cover more ground than modern Paris. This is Angkor, the capital of an empire that once controlled most of Southeast Asia. Its people were called the Khmer, and more than 500 years ago, they fled this grand city. To the outside world, the city existed only in obscure traveler's tales. Then in 1860, a French naturalist named Henri Moreau stumbled across the ruins. He wrote about the city and drew it, attracting the attention of the wider world. But the questions had only just begun. Who were Angkor's builders, the empire called the Khmer? And why had the city been abandoned? Archaeologists and historians have pieced together the story. Angkor's greatest marvel, Angkor Wat, served as a shrine, an observatory, and a funerary temple. Research suggests that it took almost 30 years to complete and was finished in time to bury an important king. But Angkor Wat had hardly claimed its place on the horizon when disaster struck. Drawn by its increasing splendor, the Chams, from what is now Vietnam, attacked and burned the city. When the capital was rebuilt, the king built a walled city, Angkor Thom, to protect them in time of war. But the Khmer story came to an end not long afterward. 22 kings over 500 years had worked the land until it began to fail. Rice harvests dropped and stone monument buildings ceased. Early in the 15th century, the Kingdom of Siam made profitable raids into Khmer territory. A climactic battle around 1431 brought about the end. All but abandoned, the Khmer capital was lulled into a centuries-long sleep by the encroaching jungle.