Animated Time Map of the Khmer Empire

This very impressive picture is part of an animated time map showing the extent of the Khmer Empire between 100 CE – 1550 CE.

At its maximum extension at the end of the European 12th Century – according to the writer Norman Lewis in his majestic ‘A Dragon Apparent’ – ‘the Khmer Empire included, in addition to the present Kingdom of Cambodia, parts of the Malay Peninsula, Burma, Siam and Cochin China.’

The yellow strip to the right of the map shows not the Vietnamese (they are above, in purple and still making their way down from China), but the Chams, now Cambodia’s stateless Muslim minority currently being bankrolled and pushed in a fundamentalist direction by Arabic and Malaysian Islamicist money. (Way back then, Champa was a Hindu kingdom.)

In collaboration with University of Kyoto and ECAI Southeast Asia at Berkeley, TimeMap from TimeMap.net was used to create a through-time animation of the political geography of Southeast Asian empires and the Khmer empire in particular. Funding for the project was provided by the University of Kyoto?s Centre for Southeast Asian Studies. The whole caboodle can be downloaded as a 1.2Mb Flash animation. Click below to find out how.

Animated time map of the Khmer Empire