The official history of the Thai people has been challenged by many historians in the past few decades. And the official history itself was written not very long ago. Historians addressed this topic again at the launch of a new book on Thai maps and history on Sept 14.

Prominent historian Dr Charnvit Kasetsiri began with a question asking who the Thai people are, and where they came from.

"Students would answer that the Thai people are those who speak Thai, believe in Buddhism, love the Nation, Religion and Monarchy, and probably they would also add that Thai people are good and moral, and willing to sacrifice for the country. And they came down from the Altai Mountains, and formed the kingdoms of Nan Chao, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, and then Rattanakosin," he said.

Charnvit told the audience that these ideas were found in an old book by Thongbai Taengnoi who wrote that the Thai people were originally from the Altai Mountains in Mongolia above the Huang He or Yellow River beyond the Great Wall of China.

5,000 years ago, the Thai people moved to settle in the lands between the Huang He and Yangtze rivers until they were invaded by the Chinese, so they moved to found the kingdom of Nan Chao. After being invaded again by the Chinese and the Mongols, they came down to establish the kingdoms of Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, and finally Rattanakosin or the Bangkok of today.

"This was invented by Thongbai Taengnoi, and the idea has been implanted in our minds," Charnvit said.

Generations of Thai children have learnt in school that the Sukhothai kingdom was so large as to cover Malacca and Singapore.

Charnvit believes the idea originally came from Prince Damrong Rajanubhab, an influential historian in the reign of King Rama V. In 1914, the prince wrote in the foreword for his version of Thai history that "During the time of Ayutthaya and early Bangkok, we did not know about the Altai Mountains and the kingdom of Nan Chao, until the British and French colonialists came with new technologies and knowledge including linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, etc. Those academics classified people, and wrote about Nan Chao, and the Altai."

The prince was among the first generation who learnt from the foreigners and received the ideas which eventually appear in Thailand's official history.

But the book being launched on that day, Historical Maps of Thailand (Siam), presents a different story of Thai history. Archaeological evidence shows that 5,000 years ago, there were already ancient settlements of people in the Suvarnabhumi or the Southeast Asian peninsula. However, it cannot be said for sure that they were the ancestors of the Thais as there is no written language to prove it, said Charnvit.

4,000 years ago, the native people knew how to produce metal to make tools in place of stones, and they held animist beliefs. Towns were formed along trade routes. After B.E.1, Suvarnabhumi was connected to the east and the west via the China sea and the Indian Ocean respectively. In B.E.500, there were small states, adopting Buddhism, Brahman, and also animism.

After B.E.1000, large states emerged, and the story began to converge with what has been considered the beginning of Thai history.

After B.E.1500, the indigenous states took control of trade, and the major trading languages were Javanese, Malay, Thai, and Lao. After B.E.1700, mass religions such as Islam and Theravada Buddhism emerged, while Brahman-Hindu was the religion of the elite. At this point, there were Thai people and Thai scripts.

After B.E.2000, there was Ayutthaya, a centre for international trade. People called their land ‘Mueang Thai', and themselves ‘Thai'. Later came Thonburi, Rattanakosin or the kingdom of Siam, and finally Thailand. This is the storyline in this book, Charnvit summarized.

Charnvit said that Thongbai's version of Thai history was based on modern Thai maps, and a story of kings and nobility, while this book is based on archaeological evidence discovered in the past 4-5 decades and anthropological findings which underlined the diversified ethnicity in the region.

However, Charnvit pointed out that this book presented just an outline, and suggested more work to be done: to conduct a whole new line of research on the origin of Thai people, as the Altai theory has become more and more unconvincing; and to study maps as technological tools of the colonialists and their purposes. There are two outstanding works that have paved the way: Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson, and Siam Mapped by Thongchai Winichakul.

Assoc Prof Surapol Natapintu, Dean of Silapakorn University's Faculty of Archaeology, said that Thai people might have lived here in the first place, and not coming from the Altai, because skulls of Australopithecus dated hundreds of thousand years old were found in Ko Kha of Lampang province, and 12,000 year-old skeletons of homo sapiens were found at Lod cave in Mae Hong Son, and other civilizations were found in many areas.

In sites of ancient agricultural settlements, decorations made from sea shells have been found in the north, northeast and the central region, evidence of trading among communities in the region. Pre-historic 3,000-3,500-year-old copper mines were found in Lopburi, and major markets for copper products might have been the northeast and neighbouring countries, Surapol said.

The archaeologist said that people have lived here for 5,000 years, and during this time people moved in and out all the time.