A carbon-l4 dating from a cave in northwestern Cambodia
suggests that people using stone tools lived in the cave as early as 4000 B.C.,
and rice has been grown on Cambodian soil since well before the A.D. 1st
century. The first Cambodians likely arrived long before either of these dates.
They probably migrated from the north, although nothing is known about their
language or their way of life.
Source: Tourism of Cambodia
The earliest evidence
of habitation in Cambodia has been found at Loang Spean in northwestern
Cambodia. It was occupied beginning around 5000 B.C. by people who lived in
caves, polished stones and decorated pottery with cord and comb markings. The
first evidence of village-like settlements comes from a site called
Bas-Plateaux, in southeastern Cambodia, first occupied in the 2nd century B.C.
The earliest evidence
of human habitation in the Angkor area has been dated at 5000 B.C. and was in
the form of artifacts and remains from pre-Bronze-Age hunter-gatherers. Samrog
Sen, in central Cambodia not too far from Angkor Wat, was occupied around 1500
B.C. The bones found at the site are similar to those of modern Cambodians. The
use of metal began around 1000 B.C. and became widespread by 500 B.C.
According to the
Library of Congress: “By the first century A.D., the inhabitants of had
developed relatively stable, organized societies, which had far surpassed the
primitive stage in culture and technical skills. The most advanced groups lived
along the coast and in the lower Mekong River valley and delta regions, where
they cultivated irrigated rice and kept domesticated animals. Scholars believe
that these people may have been Austroasiatic in origin and related to the
ancestors of the groups who now inhabit insular Southeast Asia and many of the
islands of the Pacific Ocean. They worked metals, including both iron and bronze,
and possessed navigational skills. Mon-Khmer people, who arrived at a later
date, probably intermarried with them.
Source: Library of Congress, December 1987
According to Lonely
Planet: “Much of the southeast was a vast, shallow gulf that was progressively
silted up by the mouths of the Mekong, leaving pancake-flat, mineral-rich land
ideal for farming. Evidence of cave-dwellers has been found in the northwest of
Cambodia. Carbon dating on ceramic pots found in the area shows that they were
made around 4200 BC, but it is hard to say whether there is a direct
relationship between these cave-dwelling pot makers and contemporary Khmers.
Examinations of bones dating back to around 1500 BC, however, suggest that the
people living in Cambodia at that time resembled the Cambodians of today. Early
Chinese records report that the Cambodians were ‘ugly’ and ‘dark’ and went
about naked. However, a healthy dose of skepticism is always required when
reading the culturally chauvinistic reports of imperial China concerning its
‘barbarian’ neighbors.
Source: Lonely Planet
The following 600 years saw powerful Khmer kings dominate
much of present day Southeast Asia, from the borders of Myanmar east to the
South China Sea and north to Laos. It was during this period that Khmer kings
built the most extensive concentration of religious temples in the world - the
Angkor temple complex. The most successful of Angkor's kings, Jayavarman II,
Indravarman I, Suryavarman II and Jayavarman VII, also devised a masterpiece of
ancient engineering: a sophisticated irrigation system that includes barays
(gigantic man-made lakes) and canals that ensured as many as three rice crops a
year. Part of this system is still in use today.
Source: Factsanddetails
To be continued
