Prehistory of Thailand

Modern linguistic theory and archaeological evidence suggest that the first true agriculturists in the world, perhaps also the first metal workers, spoke an early form of Thai and lived in what we know today as Thailand. The Mekong River valley and Khorat Plateau in particular were inhabited as far back as 10, 000 years ago, and rice was grown in the Ban Chiang and Ban Prasat areas of northeastern Thailand as early as 4000 BC. The Ban Chiang culture began bronze metallurgy before 3000 BC, the Middle East’s Bronze Age arrived around 2800 BC, China’s a thousand years later. Ban Chiang bronze works were stronger than their Mesopotamian or Chinese counterparts, mainly due to Ban Chiang’s access to the abundant tin resources of the Thai Malay Peninsula.

Early Thais, often classified with the broader Austro Thai group, were nomadic and their original homeland a matter of academic debate. While most scholars favour a region vaguely stretching from Guangxi in southern China to Dien Bien Phu in northern Vietnam, a more radical theory says the Thais descended from an ocean based civilisation in the western Pacific. The oceanic proponents trace the development of symbols and myths in Thai art and culture to arrive at their conclusions.

This vast, non unified zone of Austro-Thai influence spread all over Southeast Asia at various times. In Thailand, these Austro Thai groups belonged to the Thai-Kadai and Mon Khmer language families.

The Thai Kadai is the most significant ethno linguistic group in all of Southeast Asia, with 72 million speakers extending from the Brahmaputra River in India’s Assam state to the Gulf of Tonkin and China’s Hainan Island. To the north, there are Thai Kadai speakers well into the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi, and to the south they are found as far as the northern Malaysian state of Kedah. In Thailand and Laos they are the majority populations, and in China, Vietnam and Myanmar they are the largest minorities. The predominant Thai half of the Thai Kadai group includes the Ahom, the Siamese, the Black Thai or Thai Dam, the Thai Yai or Shan, the Thai Neua, the Thai Lu and the Yuan. The less numerous Kadai groups include such comparatively obscure languages in southern China as Kelao, Laha, Laqua and Li.

A linguistic map of southern China, northeastern India and Southeast Asia clearly shows that the preferred zones of occupation by the Thai peoples have been river valleys, from the Red River in the south of China and Vietnam to the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India. At one time there were two terminals for movement into what is now Thailand. The northern terminal was in the Yuan Jiang and other river areas in China’s modern day Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, and the southern terminal along central Thailand’s Mae Nam Chao Phraya. The human populations remain quite concentrated in these areas today, while areas between the two were merely intermediate relay points and have always been less populated.

The Mekong River valley between Thailand and Laos was one such intermediate zone, as were river valleys along the Nan, Ping, Kok and Wang Rivers in northern Thailand, plus various river areas in Laos and also in the Shan State of Myanmar. As far as historians have been able to piece together, significant numbers of Austro Thai peoples in southern China or northern Vietnam probably began migrating southward and westward in small groups as early as the 8th century AD most certainly by the 10th century.

These migrant Thais established local polities along traditional social schemata according to meuang, under the rule of chieftains or sovereigns. Each meuang was based in a river valley or section of a valley and some were loosely collected under one jao meuang or an alliance of several.

Wherever Thais met indigenous populations of Tibeto Burmans and Mon Khmers in the move south and westward, they were somehow able to displace, assimilate or co opt them without force. The most probable explanation for this relatively smooth assimilation is that there were already Thai peoples indigenous to the area.