There are two great complexes of ancient temples in Southeast Asia, one
at Bagan in Burma, the other at Angkor in Cambodia. The temples of
Angkor, built by the Khmer civilization between 802 and 1220 AD,
represent one of humankind's most astonishing and enduring architectural
achievements. From Angkor the Khmer kings ruled over a vast domain that
reached from Vietnam to China to the Bay of Bengal. The structures one
sees at Angkor today, more than 100 stone temples in all, are the
surviving remains of a grand religious, social and administrative
metropolis whose other buildings - palaces, public buildings, and houses
- were built of wood and have long since decayed and disappeared.
Conventional theories presume the lands where Angkor stands were chosen
as a settlement site because of their strategic military position and
agricultural potential. Alternative scholars, however, believe the
geographical location of the Angkor complex and the arrangement of its
temples was based on a planet-spanning sacred geography from archaic
times. Using computer simulations, it has been shown that the ground
plan of the Angkor complex – the terrestrial placement of its principal
temples - mirrors the stars in the constellation of Draco at the time of
spring equinox in 10,500 BC. While the date of this astronomical
alignment is far earlier than any known construction at Angkor, it
appears that its purpose was to architecturally mirror the heavens in
order to assist in the harmonization of the earth and the stars. Both
the layout of the Angkor temples and the iconographic nature of much its
sculpture, particularly the asuras (‘demons’) and devas
(‘deities’) are also intended to indicate the celestial phenomenon of
the precession of the equinoxes and the slow transition from one
astrological age to another.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr_T_DZNKa4
