The oldest civilization which became of overregional influence and left a somewhat greater amount of traces was Funan. Funan is seen as the first civilization in Southeast Asia. It can barely be seen as an empire, for it was probably rather an alliance of towns along the lower Mekong River delta than a centralized state. It later spread out it’s influence, stretching over greater parts of nowadays Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand until the borders of Burma/Myanmar and to the Isthmus of Kra. The parts of Funan far away from the Mekong delta were merely tributaries. Again, Funan was far away from being an integrated state, as the term ‘state’ in it’s modern version implies.
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