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Episode: Thailand

“The Land of the Asian Chilli”

4,000 years ago the stone-age people of what is today northern Thailand lived an affluent hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The people of Ban Non Wat, living mostly on freshwater fish and shellfish, also ate dog, pig, chickens and even rhinoceros and tiger. As the archaeology shows, as the population grew so did the need to feed more people.

The archaeological site of Phi Mai is one of the few in Asia that has been continually occupied by humans from the stone-age to today. All of the major developments in tool and food growing and harvesting technology are here – stone, iron, bronze, copper, alloy – and we see the gradual evolution of food – from hunter gathering through gradual domestication and then the introduction of outside food influences such as coriander and Thai chilli.

There are many burials in Ban Non Wat which demonstrates how the introduction of food changed the human physiology of people over the past 4,000 years as well as burial practices that relate directly to food symbolism, such as the number of bodies being covered with cooking pot fragments. 

In neighbouring Cambodia, a warrior civilization was on the rise which would soon envelop all of South East Asia. This civilization, known as the Khmer Empire, would soon lay claim to northern Thailand. Even though the archaeological evidence shows that the defenders of Ban Non Wat put up a staunch defence, using their moat as a water trap, they soon succumbed to the invaders. For the next 600 years Ban Non Wat would be the Western boundary of the Angkor Empire and the largest city in Thailand.

This enabled the city to become one of the few premier trading centres of South Asia. Here people from all over Asia would come with their wares and, most importantly, their foods. During this time, 800 – 1400 AD, the birth of modern Thai cooking developed, although it still lacked one essential ingredient – Chilli!! This was introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th century but the Thais were to use it in so much of there cooking that they ended up developing their own variety of the spice – Thai chilli.

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