<figcaption>Plotemy’s map of Asia</figcaption>

In 150 AD, the Roman geo­g­ra­ph­er and math­e­mati­cian Ptole­my plot­ted a map of the ancient world in his influ­en­tial work Geog­ra­phy, pin­point­ing the port of Kat­ti­gara east of the Gold­en Cher­son­ese (Malay Penin­su­la) locat­ed in Mag­nus Signus (the Gulf of Siam). Kat­ti­gara – locat­ed in mod­ern-day Ba The Mount, a small moun­tain range of rugged gran­ite for­ma­tions in An Giang province, Viet­nam – is wide­ly accept­ed by schol­ars as the archae­o­log­i­cal site of Oc Eo. Almost 2,000 years ago, Oc Eo was a thriv­ing marine port in the ancient king­dom of Funan, the first civ­i­liza­tion in pre­his­toric South­east Asia that flour­ished from the 1^st to 7^th cen­tu­ry AD. Funan extend­ed across the low­er Mekong Delta region of south­ern Viet­nam and Cam­bo­dia, and pos­si­bly parts of Thai­land and Malaysia.

The first exca­va­tions of the site by French archae­ol­o­gist Louis Malleret in 1944 revealed the ruins of an ancient marine city out­lined by an intri­cate net­work of canals criss­cross­ing the low flat­land of the Mekong Delta, con­nect­ing res­i­den­tial areas and Angkor Bor­ei in Cam­bo­dia, once the cap­i­tal of Funan. Dur­ing its exis­tence, Funan was an opu­lent mar­itime empire (tha­las­soc­ra­cy) and its bustling port of Oc Eo served as an impor­tant stopover in the inter­na­tion­al trade routes between the East and West, har­bor­ing ships and mer­chants from Chi­na, India, the Malay Penin­su­la, and the Mediterranean.

Oc Eo is large­ly still an enig­ma to the mod­ern world. Thou­sands of exca­vat­ed arti­facts – includ­ing earth­en­ware, buff-coloured ceram­ics, elab­o­rate orna­ments and jew­el­ry made of gold and gems – are clear evi­dence of an advanced civil­i­sa­tion with a remark­able exper­tise in jew­el­ry, pot­tery mak­ing, and metallurgy.

Oc Eo’s res­i­dents, like­ly mon-Khmer or Aus­trone­sian in ori­gin, were described as a sophis­ti­cat­ed peo­ple who lived in stilt hous­es near the water­ways and owed their pros­per­i­ty to the port’s dom­i­nance in the sea trade routes, backed by an agrar­i­an sur­plus cul­ti­vat­ed in the fer­tile silt of the Mekong Delta. Arti­facts from dif­fer­ent cul­tures, such as San­skrit-inscribed stone ste­les and trade items from Rome, India, and Chi­na, attest to Oc Eo’s close trade rela­tions with oth­er civ­i­liza­tions. Notably, the many stat­ues of Hin­du deities and sym­bols unearthed in the trans-Bas­sac region indi­cate a strong influ­ence of Hin­duism and Bud­dhism adopt­ed through cul­tur­al exchange, which peaked from the 4^th cen­tu­ry until Funan’s demise in the 7^th cen­tu­ry AD.

<figcaption>Oc Eo</figcaption>

In this archae­o­log­i­cal jour­ney, trav­el back in time and wit­ness the rem­nants of this enig­mat­ic civ­i­liza­tion at ancient rel­ic sites along the low­er Mekong Riv­er and learn about this lost lega­cy from an arche­o­log­i­cal spe­cial­ist. Vis­it the ​“four-hand­ed Bud­dha pago­da” nes­tled in the shade of thou­sand-year-old trees in Ba The Mount, which con­tained one of the old­est stat­ues of Vish­nu found in the king­dom of Funan. Mov­ing to the cen­tral High­lands along the banks of Dong Nai Riv­er, explore a reli­gious and cul­tur­al sanc­tu­ary with an irre­sistible aura of mys­tery. Near the Viet­nam-Cam­bo­dia bor­der, mar­vel at the UNESCO World Her­itage site of Angkor Bor­ei, the cra­dle of South­east Asia’s ear­li­est king­dom and pre­de­ces­sor of the Angkor civilization.