Angkor Wat: The Temple That Outlived Its Empire

Everyone knows the story: a French explorer hacks through the jungle and discovers a lost city. It's a good story, and it's wrong. When Henri Mouhot visited in 1860, Buddhist monks were already living at Angkor Wat, and people had been worshipping there for around nine hundred years. In this video we follow the largest religious monument ever built from its beginning to today: the usurper king Suryavarman II who ordered it, the mountain of the gods in stone, how millions of sandstone blocks reached the site, the walls that tell stories, the 1177 invasion, the shift from Hindu to Buddhist worship, the pilgrims who came anyway, and the lidar scans that revealed a vast city around it. The big question: why did the city fade away while the temple lived on? CHAPTERS 0:00 The myth of the lost city 0:57 The king who built it 2:03 A mountain of the gods, in stone 3:10 How they built it 4:23 The walls that tell stories 5:43 Invasion, rebirth, and a new faith 7:09 Decline, and the pilgrims who came anyway 8:43 Why it never died WATCH NEXT The Khmer Empire deep dive: the water empire behind Angkor How Mansa Musa broke gold Coming Friday: Mali, the empire behind the king who broke gold Subscribe for a new history story every week. #AngkorWat #KhmerEmpire #History