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Located on the Andaman seaboard of Thailand, Krabi, a southern province of Thailand perhaps has the history of oldest continued settlement.
Archeologists place the existence of homo sapiens in the region to 25000 to 30,000 B.C., relying on ancient colored picture, stone tools, beads, pottery and skeletal remains found in many of the cliffs and caves there.
Called "Ban Thai Samor" in recorded history, the island was one of the twelve towns that used the monkey for their standard. At the time, (c. 1200 A.D.), Krabi was a tributary to the Kingdom of Ligor, a city on the Kra Peninsula's east coast, which is today's Nakhon Si Thammarat.
At the start of the Rattanakosin period, over 200 years ago, when the capital was finally settled at Bangkok, Nakhon Si Thammarat was already a part of the Thai Kingdom. An elephant kraal was established in Krabi by order of Chao Phraya Nakorn (Noi), the governor of Nakhon Si Thammarat. He sent his vizier, the Phra Palad, to oversee this task, who was followed by so many people that soon Krabi had a large community in the boroughs of Pakasai, Khlong Pon, and Pak Lao.
In 1872, King Chulalongkorn brought these three boroughs together and bestowed upon them town status. The town was called Krabi, a word that preserves in its meaning the monkey symbolism of the old standard. The town's first governor was Luang Thep Sena, although it continued to be a dependency of Nakhon Si Thammarat for a while. In 1875, Krabi was raised to a fourth-level town in the old system of Thai government and administrators then reported directly to the central government in Bangkok, and Krabi's history as a unique entity, separated from the other provinces, began.
During the present reign, civil servants, merchants, and the general population of Krabi and other nearby provinces came together to construct a royal residence at Laem Hang Nak Cape, thirty km west of Krabi Town for presentation to His Majesty the King.
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