THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
T R A V E L N O T E S
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IN SEARCH OF THE BLACK PRESENCE IN CAMBODIA
| DEDICATED TO THE GODFREY FAMILY |
In regards to travel and lectures, 1999 was my most productive year to date. Internationally, in 1999, I lectured in Thailand, Hawaii, India, Russia, Trinidad, Venezuela and Guyana. The Ancestors were very good to me. It was wonderful set of experiences, and I frequently felt that I was in a kind of dream. All of this travel revolved around researching the African presence globally. All of my lectures were about who African people are, where we are, what we have done, and what we are doing. All along I felt that I was a sort of ambassador possessed of a strong sense of mission and purpose.
THE BLACK PRESENCE IN CAMBODIA
My last travel experience in 1999 took me to Thailand and Cambodia. In fact, Cambodia was the only country that I traveled to in 1999 where I didn't lecture. I went to Cambodia solely for research.
My interest in the Cambodian kingdom of Angkor began in the mid-1970s when I came across John G. Jackson's powerful and informative volume Introduction to African Civilizations. This was a pivotal book in my life, and reading it stoked a fire in me that has never been quenched. Referring to one of the numerous groups of Black people in Southeast Asia, specifically Cambodia, professor Jackson pointed out that:
"These Asiatic black men were in fact the Khmers, who were the dominant people in southeastern Asia for six-hundred years. The center of this culture was in Cambodia, and flourished from about 800 A.C. to 1432; although the history of these Khmers may be traced back to an earlier period."
In 1923, in his Racial History of Man, a hallmark work in ethnology and anthropology, Harvard University anthropologist and Librarian of the Peabody Museum, Roland Burrage Dixon (1875-1934) noted that the ancient Khmers were physically:
"marked by distinctly short stature, dark skin, curly or even frizzly hair, broad nose and thick negroid lips. While metrical data are almost wholly lacking, it seems probable that we have, in the latter group, the much mixed survivors of an early Negroid stratum, of mixed Proto-Australoid and Proto-Negroid types (with perhaps some Negrito)."
In 1968 Christopher Pym, in his Ancient Civilization of Angkor, wrote that "Basically, all Khmer women had burnished brown skin. The common people were very dark, sometimes nearly black-brown." In remote antiquity, the Khmers established themselves throughout a vast area that encompassed portions of the modern countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Laos.
The Khmers were phenomenal builders. Among the major Angkor temple complexes were Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm and Banteay Srei. They are all magnificent, well worth visiting and have been described in some detail in previous essays. Other significant and interesting Angkor building projects include the Indratataka and the Jayatataka, vast artificial lakes, in the middle of which stood marvelous temples built on man-made islands.