Situated on the banks of the Yom River (some 375 kilometers north of present-day Bangkok.)
• Sukhothai was the cradle of Thai civilization, the place where it is believed that Thai institutions and culture first developed.
• It was there in the late B.E. 18th Century (Christaian: 13th century) that the people of the central plain freed themselves from Khmer rule; thereby, took the name “Thai”, meaning "free," to set themselves apart from other Tai speakers which were then still under foreign rule.
• During that time, small villages scattered along the Yom and the Nan River basins prospered from the expansion of interstate transport and trade to the extent that they finally amalgamated and established their own territory: SUKHOTHAI.