The Karen are thought to have originated in Tibet and have lived in Burma for hundreds of years. They have been in Thailand since the eighteenth century. There are today some four million Karen in Burma and 280,000 in the mountain areas all along the Thai side of the Burmese border. As a result many embraced Christianity easily upon meeting the foreign missionaries The Karen have a special relationship with elephants and their trainers are the best in Asia. They began to arrive at the beginning of the century from Burma and in the south of China.
Ancestor worship is the most important factor in their lives.
Akha think of themselves as a link in the chain of his ancestors and will be able to recite the names of at least sixty of them. In due course they will become one an ancestor themselves to be revered by his own descendants. They crossed the border from China via Laos at the end of the ninetieth century. The Yao are literate and in many ways the most sophisticated of the hilltribal people. They use Chinese characters for writing their ancestral and medicinal books.