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Popular Archaeology A principal archaeological World Heritage site is becoming a victim of its own popularity. 
Its stones witness the feel of fingers and the weight and movement of shoe-shodden feet easily numbering in the hundreds of thousands every year. For the tourists who, this past year alone, numbered more than a million, it is an otherworldly experience that catches and transfixes the eye and dazzles the mind. For most of them, like the Taj Mahal in India, knowing the history and the religious significance of Angkor Wat tends to take a back seat to the almost mind-numbing visual experience. But the beauty and grandeur of the site might fade into oblivian if current trends continue and steps are not taken to ensure its sustainability."Nobody should be allowed to walk on 1,000-year-old stones," says Jeff Morgan, who is executive director of the California-based Global Heritage Fund (GHF). GHF is currently leading efforts to conserve a sister site, Banteay Chhmar (see image of ruins, below right). It is a smaller site, but its beauty and historical significance is every bit as comparable. GHF is implementing a conservation and site management plan there that is designed to ensure that Banteay Chhmar will be there for generations far into the future. Instead of walking directly upon the ruins, visitors will be able to view the ruins from suspended cable platforms, and carefully developed interventional strategies will be executed to protect and preserve the structures, towers and bas reliefs that are most at risk. The management at GHF is hoping that the same could be done for Angkor Wat, where mass tourism threatens to permanently tarnish its allure for future generations and endanger its presence as one of the most prominent World Heritage sites. According to a recent News Wire report, "little is being done to stop hoards of visitors from trampling the precious stonework, pounding its foundation with hard-bottomed shoes and damaging its bas-reliefs with oily fingers. Siem Reap [the city in Cambodia where it is located] has also developed at a furious rate, with hundreds of new hotels and shops encroaching on the temples, and a new airport promising to further increase visitor numbers. Over the next decade, the population of Siem Reap is expected to double to a quarter million". One is hard-pressed to blame the Cambodian people and their government for this. Tourism, and the major role that Siem Reap and its showcase attraction of Angkor Wat play in this, is a major source of foreign revenue for a country that is considered to be among the poorest and least-developed countries in the world. The tourism industry is critical to its economy. Concerned conservationists and officials, however, are warning that, unless long-term, concerted efforts are made to strengthen its sustainability, the gem of its tourism industry will eventually collapse as Cambodia's "ace in the hole" for tourism and its developing economy. The Promise of Angkor Aside from the economic issues, Angkor Wat represents a cultural treasure of both historical and scientific interest to Cambodia and the world at large. It was built as a religious temple complex in the early 12th century for King Suryavarman II as his state temple and part of his capital city. Although it was originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, in the late 13th century it became a center of Theravada Buddhism, and it remains to this day as the world's largest religious building, still in use as a religious center. Buddhism accounts for the faith of over 90 percent of the Cambodian people and therefore this religious and cultural icon is a national symbol for the country, appearing on its national flag. Although Angkor Wat is immense in its own right, it was actually only part of a much larger populated area known as Angkor, the seat of the Khmer Empire, which flourished from the 9th to the 15th centuries. It was a region that included over 1,000 other temples and an estimated population at its height of perhaps one million people. Based on research conducted in 2007, archaeologists and other specialists have concluded that Angkor may have been the largest preindustrial city in the world for its time, boasting an urban plan and infrastructure that spread over 1,000 square kilometers (390 square miles). Ancient Angkor, including its interlocking human settlements, agricultural practices, irrigation systems, and architectural, engineering, and artistic achievements, continues to be a subject of intense research today. For all of these reasons, Angkor Wat and its regional setting, Angkor, will continue to be a draw for world tourism, research scientists, and the interest of the Cambodian people who consider it a symbol and hope of national pride and cultural and economic wealth long into the future. For now, the ever-expanding tourist flow and Cambodian national economic needs will persist in placing pressure on the massive, yet environmentally fragile, sandstone structures and intricately carved bas-reliefs. Cambodian officials and conservationists, however, fear that the magnificent cultural and archaeological treasure will fade away and some day become a reality experienced only in media archives. For them, and by extension for the rest of the world, it is a race against time. Says one observer, a wanna-be Angkor tourist, "It would be a shame to know that my unborn grandchildren couldn't enjoy seeing this wonder in its present glory. There is time for me. But maybe not for them. I'm going to take as many pictures as I can when I go. It might be all they will have on a personal level."
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