Archeology can still tell us little of the first human occupants of
Siam. The earliest evidence of man's existence here is furnished by
celts, uncovered in the Peninsula and on the eastern plateau, which
are supposed to date from the later Neolithic period; geology,
however, gives us no reason to conclude that the makers of these
implements were not preceded by other races.
[Illustration: 1. The rivers fall from the northern plateaus to the
central plain through narrow defiles.]
[Illustration: 2. Ancient wall at Chiengmai. The city walls are
preserved as picturesque ruins.]
[Illustration: 1. An international incident was caused by the European
alpinist who first scaled the monolith to plant his nation's flag upon
it.]
[Illustration: 2. Boats must be pulled upstream through the rapids by
ropes.]
[Illustration: 1. The valuable gum resin, Bengal kino, is yielded by
the "mai kwao" (_Butea frondosa_).]
[Illustration: 2. Young rice plants are transplanted from a seedbed to
the flooded fields.]
[Illustration: 1. At the end of the rains, fish may be captured from
the roadsides.]
[Illustration: 2. Cows and water buffaloes are treated as family
pets.]
Among the mountains of the Malay Peninsula exist to this day small
groups of dwarf, black-skinned, kinky-haired people, different from
all other races of the country but closely related to the natives of
the Andaman Islands and the Negritos of the Philippines; it has been
surmised that these Ngo (Semang) are the dwindling remnant of a once
numerous population, successors to (and possibly descendants of) the
Neolithic men.
Following the Ngo and sometime during the past few millennia, it is
believed that there came successive waves of a people of Mongolian
origin who, making their way down the rivers, drove the primitive
Negritos into the hills and settled in their place. Now conveniently
known as the Mon-Annam family, their descendants are the Mon
(Peguans), the Cambodians, and the Annamese, as well as numerous
semibarbarous lesser tribes which persist among the mountains of the
subcontinent.
Probably between two and three thousand years ago and certainly after
the arrival of the Mon-Annam immigrants, another great population
wave, known as the Tibeto-Burman family, rolled southward over
Indo-China but chiefly descended the valley of the Irrawaddy (where
they have given rise to the modern Burmese), thus scarcely entering
Siam at all. Only in comparatively recent times, driven from their
former homes by political disturbances, have tribes of this stock
(Yao, Meo, etc.) migrated into Thailand and the territories to the
east, where they are constantly being joined by others of their blood
brothers from farther north.
While the Mon and the Khmer (Cambodians) were still spreading over the
southern parts of Indo-China and before they had begun, under the
influence of colonists from India, to emerge from a condition of
savagery, the tribes which they had left behind them at different
points during their southward movement were already being driven back
into the mountains and brought into a state of partial subjugation by
the members of a third great family of migrants from the north. These
were the people now known as Lao-Tai, who, sending out bands from
their ancient seat in the valley of the Yangtze, had already, 2,500
years ago, established a powerful state on the banks of the Me Khong
in the neighborhood of the modern Wieng Chan (Vientiane).
The Lao-Tai of the Yangtze Valley were evidently very numerous, for
not only did they thus early establish kingdoms far from home but also
became a power in their own land and for some time bid strongly for
the mastery of all China. For centuries they waged successful wars on
all their neighbors, but their strong propensity for wandering
weakened their state and finally caused its disintegration. The
Chinese attacked them repeatedly, each attack producing a fresh exodus
until, during the thirteenth century A.D., the Emperor Kublai Khan
dealt them a final blow which crushed their power and scattered them
in all directions. Fugitives entered Assam, where earlier emigrants
had already settled, and became the dominant power in that country;
others invaded Burma, where for two centuries a Lao-Tai (Shan) dynasty
occupied the throne; while down the Salwin and Me Khong Valleys came
band after band of exiles who mingled with their cousins already
established in those valleys and, in time fusing with the Mon and the
Khmer, produced the race which, since the founding of the city of
Ayuthia, has been dominant in Siam.
The principal divisions of the Lao-Tai family now living within the
borders of Siam are the Thai ("free men") or Siamese proper; the Lao,
who occupy the former seats of those tribes of their own stock that
afterward developed into the Thai; and the Shans, a later intrusion of
distant cousins, descended from the Lao-Tai tribes that settled in the
more eastern districts of Burma in the twelfth century and earlier.