Scholars agree with the Akha that they originated in China; they disagree, however, about whether the original homeland was the Tibetan borderlands, as the Akha claim, or farther south and east in Yunnan Province, the northernmost residence of present-day Akha. The historically documented existence of relations with the Shan prince of Kengtung indicates that Akha were in eastern Burma as early as the 1860s. They first entered Thailand from Burma at the turn of the 20th-century, many having fled the decades-long civil war in Burma.