History of Mani the ancient African ethnic group in Thailand, Asia.
Thursday, September 8, 2022
Mani people also known as Maniq people is part of the ancient ethnic group of African ancestry in Thailand, they are the only negrito people in Thailand and they speak Maniq also referred as Tonga, Kensiu or Mos language. Mani people build temporary huts of bamboo with roofs made of banana leaves , they hunt many types of animals and consume many kinds of different fruits and vegetables , they wear simple traditional clothes made of materials such as bamboo leaves , It is said they are familiar with many different species of medicinal herbs and the original manuscript was written in Thai language including informations by Mr. Thonghom before 1995 then it was translated into German by Mr. Martin Pachner later it was translated and written into English .
According to Mr. Thonghom the dates were sometime referred to AD as western years as well as Thai BE which is a Buddhist area years , the year is counted as It was calculated as BE= AD+543 examples AD 2004= BE 2547 for dates before AD 1 remember that there was no year AD 0 and deduct or add depending in which direction converting 543 , when in doubt , he said you must consult your neighborhood Calendar mathematician , Mani ethnic group have lived in the hilly Interior of the Southern part of Thailand for thousands , perhaps 10,000 of years for the last several thousand years at least they have done so in close association with succession of later arrivals , Veddoids , Mon- Khmer, Indian , Malay, Mongoloid and other groups , although do not seem to have Intermarried with much of the outsiders who mostly despised them , their contact was still close enough for them to have acquired some cultural traits from their neighbors , yet these tiny groups have amazingly done so without losing their separate Identity .
In 1920 the Thai Negrito part of the Mani were group into two groups such as Trang Mani , Saturn Mani , other Negritos including Malaysian Negritos such as Semang , Meni, Kensilu , Jehai and According to Youngyouth Vichaidith , Mani are regarded as descendants of the people from ancient time , they are able to maintain their past culture and show it to the modern world since it has not been destroyed by time or modern civilization , the display of life in the past of this maintained and forested to educate the children and people of Thailand presenting valuable scientific evidence on humanity and how to organize a protective umbrella over education of Mani and how to preserve the culture even their contribution to Thai society and world heritage for the future , Forest people is another term used for the Mani people by the local people of Trang, Phatthalung and Satun provinces , the name , usually lays particular stress on the different environment that the Mani lived in as compared to the general Thai population .
According to Mani History they are the original homo sapiens that travelled from Africa and settled in Thailand many years ago , they moved with other Ancient African groups such as Andamanese of India, Aetas of Philippines , Semangs of Malaysia to their Present day settlement in Thailand anthropological evidence the specialists have come to believe that the modern Negritos represent the first modern human group to have arrived in the Southeast Asian region , after them they were followed by Veddoids in a second wave whoever the first modern humans to enter the Malay Peninsula happens to be they will certainly met Homo erectus, already in their residence there for hundreds of thousands of years, there has been recent genetic evidence that have indicated that Andamanese Negritos have been living in relative Isolation for at least the last 30,000 or possibly 60,000 years , It is claimed sadly for the Mani there has been no such evidence yet available for the Negritos of the Malay Peninsula originally , the area we now know as the Sakara Mazen Peninsula .
The meaning behind the Peninsula is the area of the salty there was a group of Indian people who earlier were moving in Java that had also took possession of the Malay Peninsula , the first Malay people or Proto- Malays who brought a Neolithic Culture with them happened around 4,500 to 3,500 years ago It is also said that around 4,500 years ago groups of people moved from Indochina into Malay Peninsula and some think that these later became known as Manis , thus the people today referred to as the ancient Malays or Proto- Malays are people who represent a mixture of racial traits and cultures
.In Mani Culture they have a lot of different names they can go by , naming can be a method by a ruling group to demonstrate to a people their subservience , both physically and socially , while showing contempt for them and their culture or way of life believed the practice has been followed by people since ancient time and they were in Thailand before other groups came to form the Thai Ancient Kingdom and It is believed Thai Mani and Malaysian Semang were the first modern humans to enter the Malay Peninsula and they remarked that the Original people of the Malay Peninsula that about 4,500 years ago the Proto- Malays moved South from Yunnan province area of China into the Southeastern Asia where they met the Negritos who , for a long time may have been the only modern humans to live in this area .
The name Mani is of both African and Mon-Khmer origins which means human beings and they speak Tonga language, Mani which are considered as forest people as other Thai people live in the Southern part of Thailand, In Banthad mountain chain and around the Malaysian border in provinces of Trang, Phatthalung and Satun.
The first Thai Kingdom was Sukhothai in the central plains of Thailand, from which originated the modern Thai Culture, which blend of Mongol and Mon, The Thailand alphabet and scripts were developed during the Sukothai period from the earliest times, It is said religion was the Impetus and driving force for building the first large structures Temples around these Temples home and business are built also walls were built, thus were the first cities created.
It is said it appears that the late ascension of these southeast Asian people was due to the lack of encompassing , unifying religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism It is said Hinduism and Buddhism had been introduced and ascended accepted by these civilizations there were devotedly religious and all of their great structure had a religious context , the preceding is an observation and nothing more also Mani have dark skin broad noses and curly hair others believed they are descendants of the early waves of human migration out of Africa and genetic studies confirmed this one of the cave-like cliff shelters is still Inhabited by Manis .
In the southeast Asia It is stated earlier, the people of the Indus valley, civilization did not live only in the Indus valley rather extent of the civilization ranged from Persian Gulf to Southeastern Asia, that they can perhaps get a glimpse Negrito people lived in pure states there Ancient African Civilization of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia. In the Southern part of Thailand, the people regular dress up like them for festivals and Ngo paa dolls can be found in a lot of shops, it is believed both Rama ll and Rama V wrote famous poems and stories about Mani and they appear in Thai literature by looking for Ngo paa and Sang thong.
They are said to be an Isolated group engaged in subsistence farming and fishing , social status is important in Thai Culture , and a group like this would be considered to have a lower status than a poor person Thai person as such as others doubt they would attract much attention from Thais in general , It is likely the hill tribes in north of Thailand would be treated much the same way , those interactions are probably more well documented given the global interest in the region .