The origins of Angkor remain a mystery. Since the beginning of this century, through academic research, a chronology was reconstituted. The temples are dated and allotted to kings. But there remains a number of interrogations and gaps.
We have some Chinese texts for the periods of Founan and Chenla then nothing between X° and 1295, end of the great period angkorian.
Many travellers passed between the XV and the XIX°, but their writings, for the majority, remain to be discovered.
First discoverers of the wonder of Angkor
Tchéou Ta-Kouan (1296, time of Marco Polo)
Tchéou TA-KOUAN, appellé also Zhou Daguan, was one of the guides of a Chinese embassy of the dynasty of Yuan. He spend nearly one year to Cambodia and visited Angkor into 1296, at the end of the historically known period of Angkor: There is not information about the kings who reigned thirty one years later, from 1327 to 1432, date of the sacked of Angkor by the Siamese ones.
His hand written, named "History of chéou Ta-Kouan" which will wait until 1902 to be correctly translated (by Paul Pelliot), remains the fundamental writing and richest for the comprehension of the customs and habits of the time.
Various Spanish and Portuguese missionnaires from 1550
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