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Article: Who were the Ancient Khmers? Cambodia's ancient past has fascinated travelers for centuries. When French explorer Henri Mouhot visited the area and first glimpsed the buildings of Angkor Wat in 1860, he considered it grander than the monuments of ancient Greece and Rome.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Calliope
- Article date:
- January 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Carus Publishing Co. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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But he had many questions: Who were these people--the ancient Khmers--who had built Angkor Wat? From where had they come? And where did they go?
We can learn something about their identity from what survives of their written records. The palm leaf books they probably wrote have vanished in the steamy tropical climate. However, stone inscriptions, written in ancient Khmer, remain, and the earliest dates to A.D. 611. The Khmer language belongs to the Mon-Khmer family, languages spoken in Southeast Asia. During the first millennium A.D., some relationship existed between the ancient Khmers and the people in central Thailand and southern Burma (now Myanmar) whose ...