Strangler fig (a kind of banyan) strangling silk cotton tree strangling ancient stone temple at Ta Prohm, Angkor. Photo copyright Kyi May Kaung.has an excellent overview of recent Cambodian history.
Especially please read Bruce Sharp's The Banyan Tree.
Especially please read Bruce Sharp's The Banyan Tree.
"Ta Prohm was the temple chosen by the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient to be left in its 'natural state,' as an example of how Angkor looked on its discovery in the 19th century."
Michael Freeman and Claude Jacques, Ancient Angkor, River Book Guides, 1999, p. 136.
Except that the Cambodians never forgot their own monuments, just abandoned them.
"It is frequently said that Angkor 'was discovered by the Europeans,' but this is patently nonsense and reflects a Eurocentric view. The Khmers never forgot the existence of their monuments, and even if they neglected the majority of their temples, Angkor Wat always remained occupied and a place of worship."
Ibid, p. 40.
Anyone who has been to Angkor would recognise that by their sheer scale and beauty, as well as considering how many monuments there are, the ancient temples would be hard for anyone to forget.
It is more likely extreme poverty and the always changing politics, including the Khmer Rouge years, and the American bombing which preceded it, which caused "the Cambodians to neglect their monuments."
Life and surviving has to come first. Even then, Bruce Sharp writes that of 8 m. people, in the three and a half years of the Pol Pot regime, 2 m. or one fourth of the population died.
There is nothing to indicate that previous centuries were less brutal.
Copyright Kyi May Kaung.
