Ed reviews a new paper on the fall of the Angkor civilization. He concludes:
Of course, a changing environment was far from the only reason behind the fall of Angkor. By the time the droughts kicked in, the city was already weakened by social, economic and political strife. Buckley simply thinks that the climate simply sealed the city’s demise. In fact, others have suggested that some force may have pushed the local people to move from inland agriculture to maritime trade. Buckley says that this transition coincides neatly with the aftermath of the first drought.
An economic historian might term the droughts which Angkor was subjected to an "exogenous shock." Basically an outside factor which slams into an equilibrium system periodically (I assume that super-droughts would exhibit a poisson distribution but readers more climatically savvy can correct me). On the other hand, there are parameters which are endogenous to the ...
