History of Laos

Common card · No. 379242

Evidence of modern human presence in the northern and central highlands of Indochina, which constitute the territories of what later is Laos, dates back to the Lower Paleolithic. These earliest human migrants are Austronesians—associated with the Hoabinhian culture—and have populated the highlands and the interior, less accessible regions of Laos and all of Southeast Asia. The subsequent Austroasiatic and Austronesian marine migration waves affected landlocked Laos, and direct Chinese and Indian cultural contact had a greater impact on the country. Laos exists in truncated form from the thirteenth-century Lao kingdom of Lan Xang, which existed as a unified kingdom from 1357 to 1707, divided into the three rival kingdoms of Luang Prabang, Vientiane, and Champasak, from 1707 to 1779. It fell to Siamese suzerainty from 1779 to 1893 and was reunified under the French Protectorate of Laos in 1893. The borders of Laos were established by the French colonial government in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Aaron Smith from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0