The Northern
area is a mountainous region and its
pre-dominant people are Thai, usually called Thai
Nuea or Northern Thai. The Thai live in the lowland
of the valleys while on the uplands live a number of
primitive tribes belonging mostly to the two linguistic
families the Mon-Khmer and the Thibeto-Burmans.
The North- Eastern
area is a vast plateau tilted towards
south-east and drained by the river Mekhong which forms
the eastern boundary between Thailand and French Indo-china.
The people in this legion are also predo minantly Thai
usually called the Lao. Across the river Mekhong on
the left bank also live the Laos of Lao State. Living
in isolated groups are the Phutai, another tribe of
Thai stock whose former home was in French Indo-China,
and a number of minoritie s mostly of the Mon-Khmer
family.
The Central area
consists of one vast lowland plain watered by the Menam,
or, to call it by the real name, the river Chao Phya,
and other river systems. Here live the Thai or Siamese.
There are in this area small c ommunities of Mons and
Cam-bodians of the Mon-Kkmer family, Annamites, Malays
and Burmans mostly Tavoyans, a tribe akin to the Aracanese
of Burma.
In the Southern
area, throughout the Malay Peninsula,
are the Thai, but in the southernmost parts the people
are mostly of Malayan blood. (See further details of
the physical features and ethnology of Thailand in
Siam, Nature and Industry published by the
Ministry of Commerce and Communications, Bangkok 1930).
Ethnologically and culturally, these
fore areas overlap one another and affect reciprocally
also Thailand's neighbours i.e. the Cambodians in the
southeast, the Burmans in the north-east, and the Malayans
in the south. Later on come other races, the Chinese,
the Indians, the Indonesians, and other Asiatic races,
and lastly but in no way of least importance, the Europeans
and Americans who affect radically the traditional culture
of Thailand.
