Cambodia's history in the 20th century has been a succession of events so terrible and traumatic that the country is still in a state of after-shock - "awakening from a nightmare" is a phrase that is often used.

It started peacefully, however. The area has been settled since prehistoric times - the earliest settlement has been discovered in the province of Battambang. It is six thousand years old. The people who founded it - their exact identity is not known - lived in caves and knew pottery. The prehistoric period lasted until the 8th century AD. By its end villages had been founded in the coastal areas and the valleys and their inhabitants, who through examinations of ancient bones could be shown to be similar to present-day Khmer,  lived in stilt houses, practiced animism for a religion, knew how to grow rice and other crops, kept domesticated animals, used metal tools and were able to produce earthenware. Chinese and Indian trading ships found their way to Cambodia and founded trading posts.

One of them developed into Funan which was a flourishing trading state located around the Tonlé Sap, the Great Lake an on the flat lands around Phnom Penh. Funan is a Chinese name but the main cultural influence here was Indian, and a lot of religious and social ideas from India spread from Funan to other areas of the country. The inhabitants of Funan are believed to have spoken a proto-Khmer language but the court language was Sanskrit. The use of Sanskrit lead to the development of a writing system and thus the oldest inscriptions found in Cambodia are from the Funan period. The Indians also introduced formal religions like hinduism and buddhism, a legal system, and ideas like universal kingship. After some centuries civil wars weakened Funan and a new centre of political power emerged on the Mekong, near present-day Laos. This new state was called Chanla or Zhenla which lasted about 200 hundred years but then split into two rivaling states, Upper Zhenla and Lower Zhenla.

The next phase in the history of Cambodia was the Angkor period, see The History of Angkor in the corresponding section of our travel guide. This period ended with the pillaging of Angkor by the Thais of Ayuthaya - it was abandoned and a new capital founded first in Lovek and then in Phnom Penh ( see History of Phnom Penh)

1859 was the year that the French arrived in Cambodia and assumed control over it. Cambodia became a French colony until King Sihanouk declared independence in 1945, full independence was gained in 1953. In the 1960s the Vietnam war became a threat to Cambodia, although the country tried to stay neutral. In 1970 Sihanouk, who had become increasingly autocratic, was deposed and fled to Beijing. The Khmer Rouge, whom he supported, retired to the jungle. Although there was never an official declaration of war, the United States attacked Cambodia and carpet bombed the central and eastern areas of the country. These attacks stopped only after the end of the Vietnam war.

The next catastrophe was the victory of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot with the infamous declaration of the "Year Zero" and the establishment of what was called "Democratic Kampuchea". This time was characterized by forced de-urbanization of the population, national chauvinism, religious intolerance, a Luddite rural-based social system, mass murder of minorities and, in the end, a scarcely understandable form of self-destructive killing frenzy of the Khmer Rouge Regime which has come to be known as auto genocide. The strong militarist tendencies of the Khmer Rouge led to conflicts with Vietnam; a new war was the consequence.

In 1979  the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and occupied it. The deposed "Democratic Kampuchea" leadership fled to the Thai border and started a long period of guerilla warfare, which included the placement of land mines in large areas. Many of the land mines have until today not been cleared.

The Vietnamese occupation lasted until 1989. In 1991 the Kingdom of Cambodia was recognized by the United Nations. The country was placed under the United Nation's Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and the first general elections were held in 1993. Sihanouk returned from his exile in Beijing and became the country's monarch. The threat from the Khmer Rouge ended, however, only as late as 1998, when Pol Pot, their leader, died under mysterious circumstances, and government troops  defeated the last Khmer Rouge troops at Anlong Veng. Since then Cambodia is slowly returning to inner peace and recovery from the traumatic events of the past.

Geography

Cambodia is situated at the heart of Indochina, on the Gulf of Siam, sharing borders with Thailand in the west, Laos in the north, and Vietnam in the east. Its total area covers 180.000 kilometers in square; the capital, Phnom Penh, lies in the south east.  Cambodia's landscape is dominated by two large bodies of water - the river Mekong (in some places 5 kilometers wide) and the vast lake Tonlé Sap. The Mekong enters the country from Laos in the north and flows for about 500 km through the country until it crosses the border to Vietnam where it ends in the South China Sea. One of its tributaries is the Sap river that runs from the southeastern end of the lake and joins the Mekong in Phnom Penh. It is there that in the time from may to October a surprising hygrographic phenomenon occurs: when the monsoon rains make the waters of the Mekong rise, the flow of the Sap reverts - the only river in the world that is known to flow back. The water masses from the reverted Sap cause the Tonlé Sap to increase by up to 70 kilometers in width.

90% of the inhabitants of Cambodia are Khmer; the rest are Vietnamese, Chinese, Cham muslims, or members of the Khmer Loeu hill tribes, such as the Kuy, Brao, or Mong. The Thai, Lao, and Shan population of Cambodia has been nearly wiped out during the terrible regime of the Khmer Rouge.

The Climate is tropical, with hot and humid weather - the southeast monsoon between May and October brings most rain. Large areas of the mountain ranges in the southwest are still covered with tropical rain forest, with the exception of the highest elevations where subtropical pine forests can be found. Large scale logging started under the Khmer Rouge but continues until today. The salt marshes on the coast are also threatened: large shrimp farms occupy the land where mangrove forests stood before. The main crops grown in the lowlands are rice, maize, and tobacco.

The main religion is buddhism, mainly buddhism of the Theravada school. The earliest inhabitants of Cambodia were animists, later they became, due to Indian influences, hindus, but buddhism gradually began to spread from the 10th century. Certain animist ideas are, however, until today quite popular - for instance, spirit houses are common, just as in Thailand.