The Courant is running a story picked up from the Los Angeles Times describing recent learning into the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia:
The medieval Khmer city of Angkor in Cambodia was the largest pre-industrial metropolis in the world, with a population of nearly 1 million and an urban sprawl that stretched over an area similar to that of modern-day Los Angeles, researchers reported Monday.
The city’s spread over an area of more than 115 square miles was made possible by a sophisticated technology for managing and collecting water for use during the dry season - including diverting a major river through the heart of the city.
But that reliance on water led to the city’s collapse in the 1500s as overpopulation and deforestation filled the canals with sediment, overwhelming the city’s ability to maintain the system, according to the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The hydraulic system became “not manageable, no matter how many resources were thrown at it,” said archaeologist Damian Evans of the University of Sydney, Australia, the lead author of the paper.
Why does the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, plus recent events in New York including the steam pipe explosion and the recent flooding of the subway system spring to mind?