▶ Your Answer :
The lecturer the three possible causes that
reading passage suggests as the reasons for City Angkor’s demise; plague, water
system, and the rise of maritime trade.
First of all, the lecturer argues that the
Black Death unlikely affected the population in Angkor because the city was
located far inland. To be specific, the disease was spread from China through
shipments for trades and therefore, the plague should have affected coastal
cities at first, not directly invading inland cities such as Angkor. This
argument counters the reading passage that introduces the Black Death as one of
the causes for the collapse of Angkor.
Secondly, the speaker rebuts the reading
passage’s assertion that the failed water system should be also blamed to the
collapse of Angkor. The lecturer mentions that only 50% of the Angkor population
depended on the irrigation system to get water and there should have been other
water supplies that Angkor people relied on.
Finally, the lecturer again disagrees the
reading passage’s assertion that the rise of the maritime trade brought about
the demise of Angkor’s economy. According to the lecture, since Angkor traded
only agricultural products, but on the contrary, in 15th century the popular
items for the maritime trade were luxury goods. Therefore, the rise of the
maritime trades hardly affected the trade of agricultural items that Angkor
mainly depended on.
|