Southeast Asia · Post-Classical Era
Khmer Empire
Builders of the largest religious monument on Earth
802 CE – 1431 CE · 629 years
Centered on the temple-city of Angkor, this empire built what remains the largest religious monument on Earth.
Where it sits on the calendar
Government
Divine kingship
Writing system
Khmer script
Estimated peak population
1,000,000
How it ended
Climate shift or drought
Traits
How Khmer Empire ended
Tree-ring evidence points to severe drought-flood cycles straining the empire's hydraulic infrastructure before Ayutthaya's invasions.
See other civilizations that fell the same way →Notable for
- Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world
- Vast water-management reservoir (baray) network
- Angkor as possibly the largest pre-industrial urban settlement
Who else was alive at the same time
7 other civilizations in this dataset overlap with Khmer Empire's 629-year span.
See every overlap involving Khmer Empire →