Cambodia

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Cambodia (कम्बोडिया) is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia.

Variants of name

Location

It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east and the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh, the political, economic and cultural centre of Cambodia.

Origin of name

The "Kingdom of Cambodia" is the official English name of the country. The English "Cambodia" is an anglicisation of the French "Cambodge", which in turn is the French transliteration of the Khmer កម្ពុជា kampuciə. Kampuchea is the shortened alternative to the country's official name in Khmer ព្រះរាជាណាចក្រកម្ពុជា prĕəh riəciənaacak kampuciə. The Khmer endonym Kampuchea derives from the Sanskrit name Kambojadeśa (कम्बोजदेश), the country of Kamboja[1] The term Cambodia was already in use in Europe as early as 1524, since Antonio Pigafetta (an Italian explorer who followed Ferdinand Magellan in his circumnavigation of the globe) cites it in his work Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo (1524-1525) as Camogia.[2]

Pre-history

There exists sparse evidence for a Pleistocene human occupation of present-day Cambodia, which includes quartz and quartzite pebble tools found in terraces along the Mekong River, in Stung Treng and Kratié provinces, and in Kampot Province, although their dating is unreliable.[3]

Some slight archaeological evidence shows communities of hunter-gatherers inhabited the region during Holocene: the most ancient archaeological discovery site in Cambodia is considered to be the cave of L'aang Spean, in Battambang Province, which belongs to the Hoabinhian period. Excavations in its lower layers produced a series of radiocarbon dates around 6000 BC.[4][5] Upper layers in the same site gave evidence of transition to Neolithic, containing the earliest dated earthenware ceramics in Cambodia[6]

Archaeological records for the period between Holocene and Iron Age remain equally limited. A pivotal event in Cambodian prehistory was the slow penetration of the first rice farmers from the north, which began in the late 3rd millennium BC.[7] The most curious prehistoric evidence in Cambodia are the various "circular earthworks" discovered in the red soils near Memot and in the adjacent region of Vietnam in the latter 1950s. Their function and age are still debated, but some of them possibly date from 2nd millennium BC.[8][9]


Other prehistoric sites of somewhat uncertain date are Samrong Sen (not far from the ancient capital of Oudong), where the first investigations began in 1875,[10] and Phum Snay, in the northern province of Banteay Meanchey.[11] An excavation at Phum Snay revealed 21 graves with iron weapons and cranial trauma which could point to conflicts in the past, possible with larger cities in Angkor.[12] [13] Prehistoric artefacts are often found during mining activities in Ratanakiri.[14]

Iron was worked by about 500 BC, with supporting evidence coming from the Khorat Plateau, in modern-day Thailand. In Cambodia, some Iron Age settlements were found beneath Baksei Chamkrong and other Angkorian temples while circular earthworks were found beneath Lovea a few kilometres north-west of Angkor. Burials, much richer than other types of finds, testify to improvement of food availability and trade (even on long distances: in the 4th century BC trade relations with India were already opened) and the existence of a social structure and labour organisation. Also, among the artefacts from the Iron Age, glass beads are important evidence. Different kinds of glass beads recovered from several sites across Cambodia, such as the Phum Snay site in northwest and the Prohear site in southeast, show that there were two main trading networks at the time. The two networks were separated by time and space, which indicate that there was a shift from one network to the other at about 2nd–4th century AD, probably with changes in socio-political powers.[15]

History

In 802 AD, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name "Kambuja".[16] This marked the beginning of the Khmer Empire, which flourished for over 600 years, allowing successive kings to control and exert influence over much of Southeast Asia and accumulate immense power and wealth. The Indianised kingdom facilitated the spread of first Hinduism and then Buddhism to much of Southeast Asia and undertook many religious infrastructural projects throughout the region, including the construction of more than 1,000 temples and monuments in Angkor alone. Angkor Wat is the most famous of these structures and is designated as a World Heritage Site. After the fall of Angkor to Ayutthaya in the 15th century, a reduced and weakened Cambodia was then ruled as a vassal state by its neighbours.

References

  1. ↑ Chad, Raymond (1 April 2005). "Regional Geographic Influence on Two Khmer Polities". Salve Regina University, Faculty and Staff: Articles and Papers: 137.
  2. ↑ https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Relazione_del_primo_viaggio_intorno_al_mondo
  3. ↑ Stark, Miriam (2005). "Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian Cambodia" (PDF). In Glover, Ian; Bellwood, Peter S. Southeast Asia: from prehistory to history. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-39117-7.
  4. ↑ Stark, Miriam (2005). "Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian Cambodia" (PDF). In Glover, Ian; Bellwood, Peter S. Southeast Asia: from prehistory to history. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-39117-7.
  5. ↑ Tranet, Michel (20 October 2009). "The Second Prehistoric Archaeological Excavation in Laang Spean (2009)".
  6. ↑ "The Oldest Ceramic in Cambodia's Laang Spean (1966–68)". 20 October 2009.
  7. ↑ Higham, Charles (January 2002). The civilization of Angkor. Phoenix. ISBN 978-1-84212-584-7., pp.13–22
  8. ↑ "Research History". Memot Centre for Archaeology.
  9. ↑ Albrecht, Gerd; et al. (2000). "Circular Earthwork Krek 52/62 Recent Research on the Prehistory of Cambodia" (PDF). Asian Perspectives. 39 (1–2). ISSN 0066-8435.
  10. ↑ Higham, Charles (1989). The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-27525-5., p.120
  11. ↑ O'Reilly, Dougald J.W.; von den Driesch, Angela; Voeun, Vuthy (2006). "Archaeology and Archaeozoology of Phum Snay: A Late Prehistoric Cemetery in Northwestern Cambodia". 45 (2). ISSN 0066-8435.
  12. ↑ Domett, K. M., O'Reilly, D. J. W., & Buckley, H. R. (2011). Bioarchaeological evidence for conflict in Iron Age northwest Cambodia. Antiquity, 85(328).441–458
  13. ↑ Domett, K. M., O'Reilly, D. J. W., & Buckley, H. R. (2011). Bioarchaeological evidence for conflict in Iron Age northwest Cambodia. Antiquity, 85(328)
  14. ↑ Stark, Miriam (2005). "Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian Cambodia" (PDF). In Glover, Ian; Bellwood, Peter S. Southeast Asia: from prehistory to history. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-39117-7.
  15. ↑ Carter, A. K. (2011). Trade and Exchange Networks in Iron Age Cambodia: Preliminary Results from a Compositional Analysis of Glass Beads. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, 30, 178–188.
  16. ↑ Chandler, David P. (1992) History of Cambodia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, ISBN 0813335116.
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