Thai History - Anyone Know Of A Graphic Timeline Online? Or Elsehwere?

[buzzer]

Hi,

Due to my interest in Thai and Asian History, I have a need for a graphic time line that I can use to compare what happened, in Thailand (and Asian history, if possible) with what happened during the same general time frame throughout the world. Anything would be appreciated. Dynastic events, religious events, when various peoples migrated to different areas of Thailand, what wars were fought and when. When did the first chili peppers come to Thailand?

I'm interested in any age in history, not so much in recent events, but some of those would be welcome too. I'm trying to give some Thai friends an awareness of how Thai History relates to the history of the world. So the kind of info on the Thai time line, hopefully would contain things the Thai's would have learned from their history and traditions.

What I have found so far are lists of dates with historical events next to them, what I'd prefer is a linear graphic time line (some run parallel, not just as a single line). If it's available in English it's better for me, but if you know of one in Thai, that would certainly be welcome, too.

If it can be found on the internet - so much the better - or if you can recommend a certain book, I'll seek it out.

Thanks - Buzzer

[jackr]

The Yanks coming down to Patters for R&R, tell them

This site has a brief look at each main event in the history of Siam/Muang Thai:

Edited January 17, 2008 by jackr

[velvetelvis]

The Eyewitness Travel Guides: THAILAND (DK Books - 1997) has a linear timeline of Thai history across the bottom of 16 consecutive pages (pp 50-65) - it highlights various events in Siamese/Thai history, and makes occasional references to Khmer, Burmese, Lan Na hostories where relevant.

Surprisingly, Lonely Planet has a pretty extensive history of Thailand treatment in their guide books....no timeline though.

....go figure!

-whatever

-Lou

Edited January 17, 2008 by velvetelvis

[sonnyJ]

The Yanks coming down to Patters for R&R, tell them

This site has a brief look at each main event in the history of Siam/Muang Thai:

This link of Thailand's history gives a very rough frame. It is full of errors, inaccuracies in details and could be debated endlessly, not to speak of spelling errors. Worst history writing I have ever read.

"After the war Thailand paid a huge price for siding with the Japanese, with hefty war crimes penalties." - I don't believe anything was ever paid, for example.

[seonai]

What a great idea for a thread! What do you mean by linear? I mean I know what the word linear means but I don't quite understand it in context here?

I also would like to know when chillies were introduced to Thailand

[seonai]

Agree about the 'One Stop Thailand' site being bad and inaccurate - dates are all wrong

[buzzer]

Hi

Thanks for the responses The Eyewitness Travel Guides: THAILAND (DK Books - 1997), seems hopeful.

I guess I could have been clearer in my description of the kind of time line I'm looking for. A graphical, horizontal, linear time line would be the ultimate. Here is an example of something similar to what I have in a software package that covers many thousands of years. What I have is graphical, horizontal & linear. I believe posting actual full links is against thaivisa policy, so you will have to fill in the blanks - bibletimelines.org/FramedMinistry.html - This shows something in the format I'm looking for, which I could compare directly with what I have. But I'm looking for something similar in Thai history.

More commonly found is one like the following; Here is another one that is linear, but vertical, and not graphical. So it's a little more difficult to compare directly with what I have. ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~kallet/greece/timeline.html

I'm dealing with human history, so I'm not interested in the Mesozoic era, for example.

When I first came to Thailand, I asked someone to hand me the Remote for the TV. I was promptly corrected - "Weemote". Sorry! My mistake! I was learning. A couple years later I was trying to get a taxi driver to take me to the "Paragon" mall. By this time I realized that many Thai's think it inconceivable that they could be using words of non-Thai origin. I had learned enough Thai by this time to explain to the man that the word Paragon came from the Greek language and changed to eventually arrive at its present meaning, which, while it failed to inform and impress, at least stopped him from laughing at my mispronunciation of the Thai word, "Paragon".

A lot of Thai's seem to think that their culture has developed independently of the rest of the world, and the inventions of Thomas Edison, and Marconi must have had Thai origins, and everything that exists started here.

The chili peppers thing is just a fun teaching tool that I use to tell Thai's that they have only been eating "Phet phet" for a few hundred years. The plant came from South America, and didn't arrive here until it was introduced by the Portuguese traders in the late 16th century. From a Time Magazine article "Ask a Chinese chili lover or an Indian or a Thai and most will swear that chilies are native to their homeland, so integral is the spice to their cooking, so deeply embedded is it in their culture." and, "In Thailand, a short-lived Portuguese presence failed to convert the locals to Christianity but succeeded in revolutionizing the Thai kitchen."

[Samuian]

"Ask a Chinese chili lover or an Indian or a Thai and most will swear that chilies are native to their homeland, so integral is the spice to their cooking, so deeply embedded is it in their culture."

Ask a Central-European about Potatoes, an Italian about the Pomodori....same, same.. it's the ignorance of the people not necessarily their cultural background, this I believe is wide spread misconception!

Many daily used words in European languages have a very different origin, mostly that of the early "civilisations, as greece, rome, way back to the moores.. not to forget the incredible influence the tiny state of Latinum had with the impact of its language on european languages.

In most western European languages Latin Characters are used for script, but Arab numbers....

back to Thailand and it's current occupants, like on many places of this globe, they aren't the real guy's... they are migrants from somewhere else.... southern china.. people say..

Just a thought...