| Cambodia was probably first occupied by people australoides, delayed or infiltrated by groups from the North, "Indonesian" and before the Mon Khmer not settle themselves. Through the Paleolithic leaving very few traces of their passage, these people gradually disseminerent throughout Southeast Asia.
This division allowed them to live from hunting and gathering but also to develop the rice as well as original civilization called "cities round" or mimotien the name of the first site recognized MIMOT. These cities had a construction plan with circular wall surrounded by moats and were of the current in Cambodia's Mekong Delta, south and to the Se Mun valley in present-day Thailand, in the North.
In the early centuries of the Christian era, this whole region is under strong Indian influences, cultural, religious, linguistic, social and artistic borrowed and then adapted and transformed by the Khmer civilization. Meanwhile, Chinese texts speak of the Indochinese peninsula as the kingdom of Funan, born from the first century through a maritime trade along the coasts of Southeast Asia, with the active trader Roman empires , Indian and Chinese. Five centuries later, the kingdom was "Indianized" and probably saw the first pre-Angkorian buildings rise at Angkor Borei. |
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From the end of the sixth century, "Zhenla replaces the state of Funan in the relationship with China. Located further north than the Funan, the Zhenla extended from the current northern Cambodia and also emglobait southern Laos and the territory between the river and Se Mun Dangrêks Range in the north-east of the current Thailand. Among the many sites due to the time, that of Sambor Prei Kuk was kept in relatively good condition most of these monuments.
Until the end of the VIII °, a fragmentation of power led to several royal lineages to coexist until the advent of Jayavarman II, unifying the country and sanctity of Indian title, "crakavartin on Phnom Kulen in 802.
Foundation of the Empire
With this "universal monarch", begins the period known as "Angkor". The Khmer King first saw the religious foundations of the kingdom and lived in several capitals before settling in the Angkor region. After Jayavarman III, his son, a new line came to power.
From 877, Indravarman establish the basic principles were those of any time where the sacred Angkor, urban planning, and wealth formed three poles intimately intertwined and involved in the design of the Angkorian state. The planning was developed with the establishment of a new city in the present region of Angkor, which was added a large water tank, or "Baray, used to fuel both the city and its moat, to develop intensive rice production in territories normally dry.
This source of wealth associated with land development, enabled the rulers of their sacred dynasty: building religious temples in honor of his parents, the king's dynasty anchored in the religious conceptions of time and thereby legitimized its buildings and the wealth obtained.
Thus in 879, was founded the sanctuary of Preak Ko, whose six brick towers stuquees house three images of Shiva, associated with male ancestors of the sovereign and three images of the goddess for their wives. This set is the first example of the magnitude of temples called "ancestors" that the Khmer kings established thereafter, the benefit of their spiritual ancestors.
In 881, the construction of the temple pyramid Bakong appears as the first great "temple-mountain" of the Angkorian era and has long served as examples to Preah Ko In 889, a son of Indravarman received the Royal ondoyant as Yasovarman. He decided to build a new Baray (Yashodharataka) even greater for developing greater quoted (Yasodharapura) centered on the hill of Phnom Bakeng. At its summit, stands the temple mountain of the sovereign on the linga (Yasodhareshvara) which included the characters and multiplied Bakong. All around the city, small shrines erected on the Phnom Krom and Phnom Dei were devoted to the Trimurti. The water in the Baray, it came from the Siem Reap river which rises in Phnom Kulen where were located the sacred places of the foundation with the Angkor site Kbal Spean. The prestige of this set lasted for centuries. |
