Introduction (13)
Country and People
to the western world,Angkor will always be Cambodia's prime archaeological focus,attracting an ever-increasing number of visitors.But Khmer civilisation is by no means confined to just this one location,despite its huge size and grandiose architectural remains. the territory of the Khmers formerly extended over significant areas of today's Thailand and Vietnam where there are still communities with Khmer as their native language. Part of southern Laos should also be included, in particular the Wat Phu site.of major political significance,which will be described in chapter 2.Clearly such a vast area could not always have been a single political unit. Indeed when the historical record begins, some time during the fifth century,what is now Cambodia seems then to have been not much more than a territory composed of larger or smaller principalities.
nevertheless Angkor remains a key historical reference point, reflected in the scholarly chronology which has traditionally noted three main periods: pre-Angkor. Angkor and post-Angkor. This is an over-simplification of the true picture, since we now know that there was Khmer presence at Angkor long before(and after) the so-called 'Angkor epoch'