Once upon a Thai time there was a town known as Ban Chiang. The town started thriving in the 5th millennium BC and came to be identified as an important human cultural, technological and social evolution center. Its ideals spread quickly to the rest of Asia and thus influenced the urbanization landscape in the continent. Scientists reckon that it is the most important prehistoric settlement that has been discovered in Asia.

Sorry to deflate your ‘ego balloons’ ye of Asian origin, but recent archaeological works in Nok Nok Tha and Ban Chiang on the Khorat plateau shows that prehistoric Asia was culturally backward. IT is only after Ban Chiang came to being that some semblance of cultural advancement was seen in Southeast Asia. All the other cultural changes were either induced by the Indians to the west and the Chinese to the North.

Archaeological studies indicate that the earliest settlement on the Khorat Plateau – on which the Ban Chiang town is nestled – dates back to 3,600 BC. The settlers are seen to have come from neighboring lowlands. They brought along their hunter-gatherer way of life and some sedentary farming. A few years later, domesticated cattle, chickens and pigs as well as rudimentary dry-rice farming became part of the farming routine. By 1000BC, Ban Chiang dwellers had developed better farming practices, house building techniques and pottery manufacture. Excavated burial equipment in Ban Chiang showcases an increasingly complex society.

From 1000 to 300BC, wet rice farming was developed as evidenced by the water buffalo bones found at the excavation sites. More and more technological improvements were starting to come out of Ban Chiang. There is evidence that metal and ceramic goods were being produced in large scale during this period.

By the 3rd century AD, Ban Chiang is considered to have been the principal settlement in the whole of Khorat Plateau. Although very little excavation has been done in Ban Chiang, the little that has been done illustrates a deeply stratified and long cultural continuity.

Ban Chiang is as far back as you can get in Thai’s authentic, non-introduced culture. It is from here that you will get the Thai people in their true original form before Buddhism and Hinduism were introduced by foreigners.

By Kennedy Runo on 04/20/2015 in Koh Samui