61 The Era of Angkor Wat What were the halcyon days of the Angkor dynasty like during the 12th and 13th centuries when Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom were erected? What was the backdrop with regard to politics, economy, society and religion? And how have the historical truths of that period been elucidated so far? These are the issues I wish to sort out and describe in this chapter. The Khmers who accepted Indian Culture In the continental area of Southeast Asia, numerous large rivers flow from the Yunnan region towards the southern seas, and jungles partly overlapping each other spread over the vast river terraces and deltas. The Khmer people traveled at an early period along the Mekong River towards the sea, and around the 4th century they formed a regional base, on a scale that enabled them to create inscriptions dedicated to Hindu deities. In Japan, those were perhaps the closing years of the Yayoi period. The regional base was located in the vicinity of Wat Phou in what is now Laos, and the living base was further expanded. At that time, numerous ethnic minorities had moved along rivers large and small in continental Southeast Asia, and some of them reached the mountainous plateau. The reason for their not dwelling in the plains was because of the harsh living environment. They drifted to mosquito-free plateaus so as to avoid endemic diseases like malaria and dengue fever, and there they engaged in shifting cultivation. This is a hypothesis, but from the river terrace in the middle reaches of the Mekong River the Khmer people in due course slowly began to travel overland along the Mekong, and went to the shore of Tonle Sap lake after passing near the current Koh Ker Chapter 4
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