▶ Your Answer :The reading and the lecturer discuss why Angkor, the city
which located in South Asia was suddenly demised. The reading proposes three
hypothesis why Angkor was fell. However, the lecturer does not agree with the
author’s opinion by saying that it is flawed.
Firstly, the reading contends that plague, the Black Death
would have caused the demise of Angkor. Since Angkor traded animals with China
which was a source of the Black Death, the plague would have spread in Angkor
easily. Therefore, the population of Angkor would have drastically decreased.
However, the lecturer says that the plague generally dispersed by ships so that
the plague would have affected on coastal cities. However, the plague could not
have spread in Angkor which located far from the sea. Not only this, he adds
that it is still debatable whether the Black Death was in South Asia or not.
Secondly, the reading passage claims that flawed water
system of Angkor would have provoked the collapse. According to a modern
archaeological survey, the water system had some problem. Therefore, the flawed
water system would have decreased the water amount in the reservoir, so it
eventually aroused the fail of agriculture in Angkor. On the other hand, the
professor points out that if the water system has some flaws, it would not have
been a disastrous problem. This is because when the waterways were fully
operated, merely half of crops could have offered the water. Therefore, the
professor guesses that there must have been different water source apart from
the waterway.
Lastly, the author argues that the increase of maritime
trades would have been the factors which collapsed Angkor’s economy. Since sea
trade was considerably significant in Asia in that time, Angkor which located
in far from the sea and enormously relied on trade’s economy was inevitably
declined. In contrary, the speaker insists that unlike the coastal trade which
dealt with luxury items, Angkor would not have had any problem with their
economy because it was an agriculture trade center and remained as an important
center long after the maritime trade rose among the coastal cities. |