Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
The study of Cambodia's history is hampered by a lack of records. During the
time of Angkor, the texts that filled temple libraries were written on tanned
skins or palm leaves, but unfortunately these were not copied by successive
generations and none has survived; inscribed stone steles at temple sites
usually recorded only aspects of temple life, and even this information
ceased to be compiled with the demise of Angkor. But the steles, coupled
with accounts by Chinese traders and envoys, have at least allowed
historians to piece together something of Cambodia's story up until the late
thirteenth century.
Though foreign traders and Western missionaries in Cambodia wrote various accounts
after the sixteenth century, these leave substantial periods unaccounted for. More
recently, the French documented their protectorate in some detail, but these records
were largely destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. What is known of Cambodia's history is
thus something of a hotchpotch, and though much has been deduced, even more
remains obscure and will probably never be fully known.
Beginnings
he
earliest
settlements
so far uncovered in Cambodia date from 6800 BC and were
situated along the coast, where the risk of annual flooding was minor and there was a
ready supply of food. Hunter-gatherers were living in the caves at Leang Spean,
northwest of Battambang, by 4300 BC, cultivating dry-season rice and producing
ceramics, which are similar in shape and decoration to those in use today.
Neolithic
settlements uncovered at
Samrong Sen
, in central Cambodia, indicate that by 2000 BC
animals had been domesticated and slash-and-burn agriculture developed. Five
hundred years later, Cambodia entered the
Bronze Age
when the art of smelting
copper and tin was mastered, the ores probably originating from present-day Thailand.
By 500 BC, a prosperous
Iron Age
civilization was in full swing: farming, implements
and weapons were produced, and skills for working with ceramics, metal and glass were
being refined. The population slowly divided: highland dwellers continued growing
only rainy-season rice, while lowland settlers farmed the river valleys and coastal strips,
where they learned to make use of the floods, conserving water for dry-season irrigation
and prospering from the fertile soils deposited.
Funan
The origins of the state of modern Cambodia date back to the first century AD and the
emergence of the state of
Funan
, on the Gulf of Thailand, centred on the Mekong delta
and spreading across modern-day Vietnam and Cambodia (and, at its apogee, into
6800 BC
2000 BC
1st century AD
Earliest recorded evidence
of human settlement in
Cambodia
Neolithic settlements at Samrong
Sen show evidence of primitive
agriculture and domesticated
livestock
Origins of the kingdom of Funan, on the
Gulf of Thailand, one of Southeast Asia's
earliest large-scale civilizations
