Ang Choulean

Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom-Penh, Cambodia

<choulean@yahoo.com>

The Kuoy: their involvement in Cambodian history and culture

Among native ethnic minorities of Cambodia, the Kuoy have kept the closest ties with the Khmer. While several groups – Mon-Khmer and Austronesians – have stayed apart and for a long time from the Khmer, notably those living on the plateaus of the N-E provinces, while some seem to have been geographically isolated from the Khmer relatively late in the history for still unclear reasons, while some others are in a process of extinction... the Kuoy obviously remain the most prominent, at least in Cambodia.

Scholars strongly suspect that Kuoy people had their part, an important one, in the building and the blooming of the Angkor Empire. I will attempt to present some clues in support of this idea.