The sleepy town of Ban Chiang (population 5000) in northeastern Thailand appears on....1.........international maps,and until a decade....2........it was little known outside the immediate area. Now Ban Chiang is a name familiar........3.....scholars in places as far-flung as Paris and Philadelphia, and.......4.......that may figure prominently in future history books.
The source of the village's new celebrity lies a .........5....meters beneath its red,inhospitable soil. For here on the broad Korat Plateau...........6...... a vast prehistoric graveyard from.........7.... extraordinary treasures have been unearthed. Pottery, stone and metal artifacts buried with the ancient remains provide an eyeopening view of a ast that extends........8........ at least 5000 years.
At a time.....9.........the people of Southeast Asia....10........ thought to have lived in primitive, stoneage conditions- waiting for the light of civilization to penetrate from outside-the inhabitants of Ban Chiang were,......11.........fact,very advanced. They lived in a settled community, grew rice and probably.........12.......crops, made handsome earthernware pottery that shows a high degree of artistic skill. And, most significantly,....13.............made sophisticated bronze objects. There have been dated at 3000 B.C. and older- a thousand years before the oldest bronzes of China, and at..14.........as old as...15..........of Mesopotamia.
Kru Somsri's English School
