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Science In Action: Did the Climate Add to the Demise of Angkor?

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18/10/2018 GMT

Did the Climate Add to the Demise of Angkor?

BBC World Service - Science In Action, Did the Climate Add to the Demise of Angkor?

How did drought and intense monsoons help the demise of the ancient Khmer city of Angkor?

Did the climate add to the demise of Angkor? Also antibiotic resistance in India, facing off Hurricane Michael, and refuting claims of earliest life on Earth.

Angkor, in what is now modern Cambodia, was the capital city of the Khmer Empire. It flourished from approximately the 9th to 15th centuries. Angkor was a megacity supporting at least a million people (0.1% of the global population) during 1010–1220. The city houses the magnificent temple Angkor Wat, one of Cambodia's popular tourist attractions. The city established a vast network of canals, embankments, moats and reservoirs to capture, store and distribute surface water resources. It was very extensive, covering up to 1200sq kilometres. The city foundered during the 15th Century and was largely, but not completely, abandoned by 1431. Did monsoon-driven flooding weaken the infrastructure of water management in the city and contribute to its demise?

Antimicrobials in Livestock Feed 
Global pharmaceutical companies are selling antibiotics as performance enhancers and artificial fatteners to livestock farmers in India. This unnecessary use of antibiotics has been made illegal in the US and Europe, as it is thought to increase the risk of antibiotic resistance. The practice is not illegal in India, but with the subcontinent suffering from the highest incidence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) it is something the whole world needs to worry about.

Facing Hurricane Michael 
Hurricane expert professor James Elsner, at Florida State University, has studied tropical cyclones for most of his career. He advocates for a higher Category Six to be created for the stronger and stronger storms we are seeing. He lives in Tallahassee in Florida and has just faced Hurricane Michael – is this the first time the expert has been face to face with a Category Five storm? 

Refuting Claims for Earliest Life 
Two years ago, a paper was published in the journal Nature, stating that the earliest evidence of life on Earth had been discovered in rocks from Greenland’s Supercrustal Belt in Isua. Stromatolites - fossils of conical structures created by bacterial action were thought to have been identified in rocks that were at least 3.8 billion years old. However this week, also in the journal Nature, is a study refuting these claims and describing the conical structures as mere folds in the metamorphic rock.

Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Fiona Roberts

(Photo: Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia, Credit: Rick Wang/Getty Images)

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