Pre-Thai Northern Thailand

In Phrae and Lampang, archaelogists have found stone implements that suggest there was human habitation in northern Thailand over 600,000 years ago. Tools dating to around 6,000 BC link the region to the Hoa Binh culture-famous for its ritual bronze drums-associatedwith northern vietnam.

Northern Thailand's prehistoric cultures added pottery, rope and basketry to their toolkits during the area's Neolithic period (circa 6,000-600 BC) and by 5,000 BC these early northerners had developed art in the form of cave or rock-shelter paintings.

Around this same time, communities in the North were raising animals for food, and by 3,000 BC rice cultivation had begun. Begining around 800 BC, northerners were using bronze tools, probably most of which were imported since the ore deposits necessary for making this metal appear to be relatively limited in Northern Thailand.

Although it is difficult to identify the ethnicity or language of the prehistoric northern Thais with certainly, many scholars spectaculate that they may have been the forebears of the Lawa (including the Luwa and Wa) tribes well known to the region's  present and immediate past. As early as the 5th century, nine Luwa families established a Wiang (walled city) called Muang La Miang in an area that how lies just northwest of Chiang Mai's current city walls.

In the meantime, by the 6th century an important network of agricultural comminities was thriving farther south. Chief among these was the Mon kingdom of Dvaravati, which was centred near present-day Nakhon Pathom in central Thailand. The Dvaravati Mon produced many works of Buddhist art, including Buddha Image, stucco reliefs on temple walls and in caves, architecture, exquisite terracotta heads, votive tablets and various sculptures.

Between Dvaravati and northern Thailand, a second Mon community called Lavo also flourished near present-day Lopburi. The Mon kingdoms of central Thailand may have served as important cultural relay points for the pre-Angkor cultures of ancient Cambudia (Funan and Chenla) and Chanpa to the east.

Soon after consolidating power in central Thailand the Mon added a setelite principality in northern Thailand. Northern Thai chronicles recount that the hermite named Suthep decided that a riverbank spot near what is today Lamphun was a suitable spot for a new kingdom, and so in 750 he  invited Princess ChamaThewi from Lamphun-then part of Dvaravati-to found Hariphunchai.

Although the story of the hermit and the Lopburi princess has taken on mythic proportions, the idea that  the Mon were immegrants to the Lamphun area finds support in written northern Thai chronicles, which state that the local pupolation at Hariphunchai--the first community in northern Thailand known to have written records (all of which appear in Mon script)--were originally Lawa, as in Chiang Mai.

Queen Chama Thewi introduced the northto Theravada Buddhism by bringing along learned monks and buddhist texts from Lopburi, a program that suggests the Mon were seeking a place in which to transplant their culture.

By the 10th century both Dvaravati and Lopburi were threatened by the burgeoning Angkor empire, centred to the east in present-day Cambodia. During the reign of Angkor King Suryavarman I (1002-1049), Lopburi became an Angkor vassal state and the Mon watched their art and religion fade under Hindu-Khmer influence. Although Dvaravati declined quickly under Angkor rule, the northern Hariphunchai kingdom maintained its religion and customs for another two century.

Lanna's Glory

Northern Thailand straddles one of the most important historical crossroads of Southeast Asia, a mountain-meets-rivers nexus where peoples from China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand have traded goods and fused cultures for centuries. Financed by the criss-crossing of trade routes between China and the Myanmar coast, the area eventually developed into a powerful, far-reaching kingdom called "Lanna Thai" (Million Thai Rice Fields), today shortened to "Lanna". Lanna's explosion of art, culture and religions begining in the 13th century fuelled the creation of the Thai national identity as we know it today.

However, after the north was annexed to the kingdom of Siam in the early 20th century, Lanna's influence faded quickly, as Bangkok and central Thai culture came to the fore. By the end of century the ex-Lanna provinces were widely perceived to be cultural backwaters.

All that is now changing as artists, designers and architects from Bangkok, London, Paris and beyond are increasingly looming towards northern Thailand for inspiration. Chiang Mai in particular has become the focus of a passionate rebirth of everything Lanna, from art to lifestyle. Projects with an eye firmly fixed on Lanna's glory days have taken their rightful place in hotel and restaurant design, for example, as pride in things northern Thai has become the new norm.

To understand why and how Lanna is regaining cultural significence in the contemporery world, we must first look at its beginnings as a culture and as a political entity. Not Surprisingly, there are vivid connections between the arising and expension of Lanna as a kingdom in the middle of the second millennium, and its rebirth as a cultural force in recent times.