Parts of the region now called Cambodia…

Parts of the region now called Cambodia were inhabited during the first and second millennia BCE, by peoples having a Neolithic culture, as indicated by archaeological evidence.

By the first century CE, the inhabitants have developed relatively stable, organized societies, which have far surpassed the primitive stage in culture and technical skills.

The most advanced groups live along the coast and in the lower Mekong River valley and delta regions, where they cultivate irrigated rice and keep domesticated animals.

Scholars believe that these people may have been Austroasiatic in origin and related to the ancestors of the groups who now inhabit insular Southeast Asia and many of the islands of the Pacific Ocean.

They work metals, including both iron and bronze, and possess navigational skills.

Mon-Khmer people, who arrived at a later date, have probably intermarried with them.

The Khmer who now populate Cambodia may have migrated from southeastern China to the Indochinese Peninsula before the first century CE.

They are believed to have arrived before their present Vietnamese, Thai, and Lao neighbors.