Nakhon Pathom

History

Nakhon Pathom is often said to have stood on the Gulf of Thailand two thousand years ago, the coast having since moved south through sedimentation. How far inland the sea reached is disputed. Phōngsi Wanasin and Thiwa Supcanya found the ancient towns of the plain arranged in two rows above the 3.5-metre contour, which David K. Wyatt reads as the fringes of a plain then largely under water rather than as a shoreline; on his account Nakhon Chai Si stands considerably higher than the ground to its east. Trongjai Hutangkura's reconsideration of the old shoreline, as Stephen A. Murphy reports it, finds that the survey it rests on overestimated the height of the mean sea level, and that what was mapped as coast was a floodplain. Nakhon Pathom, with Ratchaburi and Sing Buri, is often counted among the oldest towns in Thailand, on a foundation date given as early as 40 BC. It was for a long time one of the principal centres of Dvaravati. David K. Wyatt cautions against treating Dvaravati as the kingdom of a single people: an inscription in Old Mon indicates a westward cultural orientation rather than a Mon population, and the Central Plain was in his account multiethnic. In Karen Mudar's locational analysis of 63 moated settlements Nakhon Pathom is the only site at the top of a four-level administrative hierarchy, standing above seven regional centres, and the best provided with public buildings. The region assigned to it holds eight moated settlements. The enclosure reached that size in two stages, a second moat taking it from about 300 ha to 602. Before that expansion it was the size of Suphanburi and of Phraek Si Racha after its own enlargement. Mudar suggested that if the three stood at that size at the same time they may have been the capitals of competing polities,…

Geography

Nakhon Pathom is located about 50 kilometres west of Thailand's capital, Bangkok, in the middle of a wide plain, crossed by watercourses, such as the Mae Nam Tha Chin (Tha Chin River). Sugar cane has been grown here since the late 18th century. Old travel reports describe that near Nakhon Pathom on the Tha Chin, there were sugar factories every four to five kilometres, surrounded by some ten to fifteen houses and firmly in Chinese hands.

Most-observed species

• Zebra Dove

  Geopelia striata (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  790
• Rock Pigeon

  Columba livia J.F.Gmelin, 1789 · Aves
  723
• Red Collared-Dove

  Streptopelia tranquebarica (Hermann, 1804) · Aves
  672
• Malaysian Pied-Fantail

  Rhipidura javanica (Sparrman, 1788) · Aves
  649
• Ayeyarwady Bulbul

  Pycnonotus blanfordi Jerdon, 1862 · Aves
  648
• Great Myna

  Acridotheres grandis Moore, 1858 · Aves
  611
• Asian Koel

  Eudynamys scolopaceus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  607
• Oriental Magpie-Robin

  Copsychus saularis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  585