No one knows for certain how long people have lived in what is now Cambodia ,where they came from
or what language they spoke before writing was introduced,using an Indian-Style alphabet ,around the third century AD Carbon-14 date from 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 BC.another Cave, near the ocean,
was inhabited about a thousand years later. presumably the fist Cambodia arrived long before either of these date ,evidence of a more primitive ,pebble -working culture has been found at Samrong Sen ,inhabited since around 1500 BC.suggest that prehistoric Cambodia resemble Cambodia 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 by scholars ,and so theories about waves of different people moving through the region in prehistoric time .but recent finds suggest that mainland Southeast Asia had a comparatively sophisticated culture in the prehistoric era, some scholars even attribute the fist cultivation of rice and the fist bronze casting to the region in any cast, it is likely that by the beginning of Christian era in the the inhabitants of Cambodia spoken language relates to present-day Cambodia, or Khmer Language belong to the Mon-Khmer family are found widely scattered over mainland Southeast Asian as well as in some of the island and in part of India .Modern Vietnamese although heavily influenced by Chinese,is a distant councin.it is imposible tosay when these language split off from one another ,some linguists belive that the split took place several thousand years ago. unlike the other national language of Southeast Asia, then-aside from vietnamese -Khmer is not anew comer to the area .this continuity is of many that strike student of Cambodia's past. What is interesting about the cave at Laang Spean is not merely that is was inhabited ,on and off,,for so long- the most recent carbon-14 date from the cave is from 9 century A,D -But the that methods used to make pottery found at the early level, and the patterns incised on them,have remained unchanged for perhaps six -thousand years ,
The changelessness' of Cambodia history was often singled out by French, who in the nineteenth century and twentieth century saw themselves as introducing change and civilization to the region,Ironically ,this theme picked up by Pol-Pot's revolutionary regime.which claimed that Cambodia were as sleep or enslaved for two thousand years,both points of view ignore a great deal of evidence, arguably,the revolution of the 1970's was the fifth Cambodia were less contemptuous of tradition, don't choose straight path ,a Cambodia proverb tell 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 which technique of getting enough to eat are passed from one generation 2 the next.
we know very little about the daily lives of Cambodians in prehistoric time, we do not know that their diet, like diet of cambodians today, included a good deal of fish,it seems likely that their houses,from an early date,were raised above the ground and made accessible by means of leader clothing was not especially important ,early Chinese account refer to Cambodians as "Naked" after about 1000 BC perhaps, they lived in the fortified villages,often circular in form,similar to those inhabited nowaday by some tribal people in Cambodia,lao,and Vietnamese ,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 through out the tropics as well as in medieval Europe ,these early
people probably passed on many of their customs and beliefs to latter inhabitants of the region although we can not be sure of this ,for these are dangers of reading back in to prehistoric and early Cambodia peasants, we can not be sure among so called primitive tribes or twentieth century peasants, we can not sure that these modern customs have not changed overtime.hairstyles for example changed dramatically in Cambodia as recently as the early eighteenth century ,and in the 1970s they changed again by the revolutionary regime,
all the same,it is unlikely that certain elements of Cambodia life and thinking, especially in the countryside ,have changed a great deal since Angkorean time ( ninth to mid fifteenth century) or even over the last few thousand years, these elements might include the village games played at the lunar ,and the association of ancestor spirits (Nak ta) with stones, the calendar ,and the soil ,the belief in water-spirits .or dragon, the idea that tattoos, protect the wearer, and the custom of betel, to the name a few,
The End
