To understand of the amazing wealth and character of Thailand's cultural heritage, you must begin with the influence of ancient India. This first entered Southeast Asia perhaps 2,300 years ago. It continued for several centuries as Indian merchants and scholars settled in the region.

It is easy to see how important this influence is to modern Thailand. Buddhist religion and popular myth are the most obvious examples. Much of Thailand's royal tradition is also rooted in Indian culture. The present dynasty, of which his Majesty King Bhumibol is the ninth monarch , is known formally as the House of Chakri. While this title comes directly from the name of the founding monarch before he became king, the word chakra actually means the discuss of Hindu mythology. It provides a clear link to Hindu beliefs.

According to ancient belief, his Majesty is the fount of everything. His representative still presides over the stately Ploughing Ceremony in May each year to foretell the state of the annual harvest. The precise date and time of the event are determined by court astrologers. Both the ceremony and the astrology come directly from India.
So does the riotous water throwing fun of Songkran, Thailand's traditional New Year in mid-April. Its date was originally fixed by the Hindu solar calendar. Another example is the Giant Swing next to Wat Suthat near the Bangkok Municipality offices. Its rites, now discontinued, were administered by Brahman priests.

But to think only in terms of Indian influence on Thailand would be deeply misleading. Who were the people who received that culture? How did they transform it and make it distinctively and gloriously Thai?
People have lived in what is now Thailand for at least 27,000 years. Early man may have been here as long as 700,000 years ago. Evidence is increasingly common, the telltale signs being flint tools and other remains found near rock shelters in the country's plentiful limestone hills.

The first signs of true culture emerge about 12,000 years ago, with formal burial of the dead, along with food for their journey, at a cave called Tham Phra in the western province of Kanchanaburi. By 8,000 years ago, settled cave dwellers in Mae Hong Son province in Thailand's far North had begun making pottery with simple linear decorations. They included these pots in their burial rites too.

From those pots to the ones produced by Thailand's famous Ban Chiang civilization near Udon Thani in the Northeast 5,000 years ago is a step of huge significance. By this time, cave-dwelling communities of hunter-gatherers had given way to recognizably modern agricultural settlements. People lived in their own houses raised on stilts. The sophistication of the Ban Chiang pots and their decoration is remarkable.

The events of the next few thousand years are still shrouded in uncertainly. What is clear is that the transition to large settlements and then groups of settlements requiring developed social and cultural structures began to occur some 3,000 to 2,000 years ago. This "proto-civilization" provided the fertile ground on which Indian influence was sown.

Four such civilizations are important. One of the earliest though perhaps least understood was that of the animist and possibly indigenous Lawa people. It centered on modern Lop Buri and spread south to north in the Chao Phraya River basin. To the west and in southern Burma, the Mon people subsequently established the Dvaravati civilization, one of whose main centers was Nakhon Pathom. To the east, meanwhile, and perhaps deriving from Ban Chiang, the great Khmer civilization gradually took root along the mighty Mekong River.
Buddhism is thought to have first come to Thailand at Nakhon Pathom, while Indian concepts of divine kingship first took root in the Khmer empire. Fed by these ideas, both civilizations grew, squeezing the less sophisticated Lawa northwards. Eventually, some 1,000 years ago, the Khmer also vanquished the Dvaravati civilization, becoming so powerful that they ruled the entire area.

Only the southern isthmus where the Srivijaya civilization had taken root was unaffected. But even here Indian influence was strong.

Considerable scholarly controversy now rages as to where the Thai people were at this time.
The conventional view is that they, together with their Shan and Lao cousins and their distinctive animist beliefs, were beginning to migrate southwards along the Mekong from Southern China. A more recent proposal is that they either filtered in from Laos and Vietnam or were here all the time.

However that may be, they assimilated a blend of animism, Buddhism, and kingship that has proven amazingly powerful. Beginning by nibbling away at the perimeter of the Khmer empire at Sukhothai and in Lanna (northern) Thailand some 700 years ago, they later established the glorious court at Ayutthaya, and eventually Bangkok.
Many peoples, among them the Chinese, Arabs, Malays, and Westerners, have contributed to Thailand's cultural heritage. Yet one symbol encapsulates it all, and you will see it wherever you go.

It is the spirit house. This is the tiny model of a temple or palace that is planted all over the country, on any piece of property or just by the roadside. It is always, out of respect, raised on a pedestal. It often looks Chinese and is usually now made using Western technology. But its entirely serious purpose is to accommodate the spirits of the land who have been disturbed by our activities.