No on knows for certain how long people have lived in what is now Cambodia, where they came from, or what languages they spoke before writing was introduced, using an Indian-style alphabet, around the third century A.D Carbon-14 dates frin a cave at Laang Spean in northwestern Cambodia, however , suggest that people who knew how to make pots lived in the cave as early as 4200 B.C. Another cave , near the ocean, was inhabited about a thousand years later. Presumably the first Cambodians arrived long before either of these dates; evidence of a more primitive, pebble-working culture has been found in the eastern parts of the country. skulls and human bones found at Samrong Sen, inhabited since around 1500 B.C., suggest that these prehistoric Cambodians resembled Cambodians today, after account is made for recent infusions of Chinese and Vietnamese blood.
Whether the early people came originally from China, India, or island Southeast Asia is still debated bu scholars, and so are theories about waves of different peoples moving though the region in prehistoric times. But recent finds suggest that mainland Southeast Asia had a comparatively sophisticated culture in the prehistoric era; some scholars even attribute the first cultivation of rice and the first bronze-casting to the region. In any case, it is likely that by the beginning of the Christian era the inhabitants of Cambodia spoke languages related to present-day Cambodian, or Khmer. Languages belonging to the Mon-Khmer family are found widely scattered over mainland Southeast Asia, as well as in some of the islands and in parts of India. Modern Vietnamese, although heavily influenced by Chinese, is a distant cousin. It is impossible to say when these languages split off from one another; some linguists believe that the split took place several thousand year a go. Unlike the other national languages of Southeast Asia, then-aside from Vietnamese-Khmer is not a newcomer to the area. This continuity is one of many that strike students of Cambodia's past. What is interesting about the cave at Laang Spean is not merely that it was inhabited, on and off, for so long-the most recent carbon-14 date from the cave is found at the earliest level, and the patterns incised on them, have remained unchanged for perhaps six thousand years.
The "changelessness" of Cambodian history was often singled out by the French, who in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw themselves as introducing change and civilization to the region. Ironically, this theme was picked up by Pol Pot's revolutionary regime, which claimed that Cambodians were asleep or enslaved for two thousand years. Both points of view ignore a great deal of evidence; arguably, the revolution of vies ignore a great deal of evidence; arguably, the revolution of the 1970s was the fifth Cambodia has undergone since prehistoric times. But prerevolutionary Cambodian were less contemptuous of tradition."Don't choose a straight path," a Cambodian proverb tells us. "And don't reject a winding one. Choose the path your ancestors have trod." Part of this conservatism, perhaps, is characteristic of a subsistence-oriented society, in which experimentation can lead to famine and in which techniques of getting enough to eat are passe from on generation to the next.
We know very little about the daily lives of Cambodians in prehistoric times; we do know that their diet, like the diet of Cambodians today, included a good deal of fish. It seems likely that their houses, from nearly date, were raised above the ground and made accessible by means of ladders. Clothing was not especially important; early Chinese accounts refer to kthe Cambodians as "naked." After about 1000 B.C, perhaps, they lived in fortified villages, often circular in form, similar to those inhabited noways by some tribal peoples in Cambodia, Loas. and Vietnam. The Cambodians, like other early inhabitants of the region, had domesticated pigs and water buffalo fairly early, and they grew varieties of rice and root-crops by the so-called slash-and-burn method, common throughout the tropics as well as in medieval Europe. These early people probably passed on many of their customs and beliefs to later inhabitants of the region, although we cannot be sure of this, for there are dangers of reading back into prehistoric and early Cambodia what we can see among so-called primitive tribes or twentieth-century peasants. We cannot be sure that these modern customs have not changed over time. Hairstyles, for example, changed dramatic in Cambodia changed agian by the revolutionary regime.
All the same, it is unlikely that certain elemants of Cambodian life and thinking, especially in the countryside, have changed a great deal since Angkorean time (ninth of mid-fifteenth centuries) or even over the last few thousand years. These elements might include the village games played at the lunar new year; teh association of ancestor spirits (nak ta) with stones, the calendar, and the soil; the belief in water-spirits, or dragons; the idea that tattos protect the wearer; and the custom of chewing betel, to name a few.
Whether the early people came originally from China, India, or island Southeast Asia is still debated bu scholars, and so are theories about waves of different peoples moving though the region in prehistoric times. But recent finds suggest that mainland Southeast Asia had a comparatively sophisticated culture in the prehistoric era; some scholars even attribute the first cultivation of rice and the first bronze-casting to the region. In any case, it is likely that by the beginning of the Christian era the inhabitants of Cambodia spoke languages related to present-day Cambodian, or Khmer. Languages belonging to the Mon-Khmer family are found widely scattered over mainland Southeast Asia, as well as in some of the islands and in parts of India. Modern Vietnamese, although heavily influenced by Chinese, is a distant cousin. It is impossible to say when these languages split off from one another; some linguists believe that the split took place several thousand year a go. Unlike the other national languages of Southeast Asia, then-aside from Vietnamese-Khmer is not a newcomer to the area. This continuity is one of many that strike students of Cambodia's past. What is interesting about the cave at Laang Spean is not merely that it was inhabited, on and off, for so long-the most recent carbon-14 date from the cave is found at the earliest level, and the patterns incised on them, have remained unchanged for perhaps six thousand years.
The "changelessness" of Cambodian history was often singled out by the French, who in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw themselves as introducing change and civilization to the region. Ironically, this theme was picked up by Pol Pot's revolutionary regime, which claimed that Cambodians were asleep or enslaved for two thousand years. Both points of view ignore a great deal of evidence; arguably, the revolution of vies ignore a great deal of evidence; arguably, the revolution of the 1970s was the fifth Cambodia has undergone since prehistoric times. But prerevolutionary Cambodian were less contemptuous of tradition."Don't choose a straight path," a Cambodian proverb tells us. "And don't reject a winding one. Choose the path your ancestors have trod." Part of this conservatism, perhaps, is characteristic of a subsistence-oriented society, in which experimentation can lead to famine and in which techniques of getting enough to eat are passe from on generation to the next.
We know very little about the daily lives of Cambodians in prehistoric times; we do know that their diet, like the diet of Cambodians today, included a good deal of fish. It seems likely that their houses, from nearly date, were raised above the ground and made accessible by means of ladders. Clothing was not especially important; early Chinese accounts refer to kthe Cambodians as "naked." After about 1000 B.C, perhaps, they lived in fortified villages, often circular in form, similar to those inhabited noways by some tribal peoples in Cambodia, Loas. and Vietnam. The Cambodians, like other early inhabitants of the region, had domesticated pigs and water buffalo fairly early, and they grew varieties of rice and root-crops by the so-called slash-and-burn method, common throughout the tropics as well as in medieval Europe. These early people probably passed on many of their customs and beliefs to later inhabitants of the region, although we cannot be sure of this, for there are dangers of reading back into prehistoric and early Cambodia what we can see among so-called primitive tribes or twentieth-century peasants. We cannot be sure that these modern customs have not changed over time. Hairstyles, for example, changed dramatic in Cambodia changed agian by the revolutionary regime.
All the same, it is unlikely that certain elemants of Cambodian life and thinking, especially in the countryside, have changed a great deal since Angkorean time (ninth of mid-fifteenth centuries) or even over the last few thousand years. These elements might include the village games played at the lunar new year; teh association of ancestor spirits (nak ta) with stones, the calendar, and the soil; the belief in water-spirits, or dragons; the idea that tattos protect the wearer; and the custom of chewing betel, to name a few.
