History Of Thailand - Part 1
Thailand An Amazing History of an Amazing Nation

Thailand as we know it today represents an amalgam of peoples, backgrounds, religions, creeds and beliefs that have fused to become one of the most strongly nationalistic countries in the world. However, there is no one heritage that Thailand has drawn upon to get to its position in Asia that it has today.

In the history of Thailand and Siam, many societies have existed concurrently, rather than in a serial lineage. Added to this is that Thailand's borders have changed many times in the past thousands of years.

The area known as nowadays country of Thailand has actually been inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years. Hunters and gatherers roamed all over and evidences of their simple lifestyles have been shown to go back to the Pleistocene era (600,000 - 130,000 B.C.).

More recent signs of civilization have been discovered at Ban Chiang in the province of Udon Thani North-East Thailand. Copper and bronze artifacts and a distinctive style of pottery dating back to between 2000 - 1000 B.C. were recently discovered, but these people have disappeared over time.

Between the 6th and the 11th centuries, called the Dvaravati period, the Indian influence was very strong, and more people, mainly from the Mon societies, started to settled in the central plains region. These Mon kingdoms expanded from U-Thong (near the later capital, Ayutthaya) to Nakhon Pathom in the West and to Lopburi and even up as far as Lamphun (Haripunchai).

From the 7th century, however, the Khmer influence began, with the Khmer Empire spreading from the North East to arrive as far down as the Chao Phraya river valley by the 11th century and by the 13th century, the Khmers had over-run the Mon. In the 8th century, the Srivijaya empire from Sumatra moved into the southern peninsula and ruled there until the 13th century. One important centre for them was Nakhon Si Thammarat in today's Southern Thailand.

In the first half of the 13th century, a Thai leader, later called King Intradit, grouped several other forces together and overthrew the Khmer overlord at Sukhothai. The city of Sukhothai was proclaimed an independent Thai kingdom in 1238 and marked the first real "Thai" state in the region.

For the people of Thailand today, this Sukhothai period is regarded as the commencement of their modern Thai history. Under King Intradit and later his son, King Ramkamhaeng, the Sukhothai empire flourished, making treaties and alliances to expand as well as using force to dispel both the surviving Mon and the Khmers.