Many thanks to Karoon, our coordinator of WBUAP MRGA 2023. He had researched and wrote this article and would like to share us about the history of Phuket.
There has been the discovery of historical evidence at Kamala Village, Ka Thu District, Phuket Province, where stone equipment and stone hatches were discovered. Thus, it is known that human beings have been in this area for no less than 3,000 years. There has been another evidence from A.D. 200 which is a note of a navigator called Claudius Ptolemy mentioning this piece of land ‘Takola Peninsula’, which a piece of land pushed out from the edge of land of Phang-nga Province in the form of a peninsula into the sea. This peninsula is caused from a great fault called (Khlong Marui Fault) that has laid itself in the longitudinal line from Surat Thani Province and Phiang-nga Province downward to the east of the current Phuket Province, which later has been corroded by wind and water until the land that linked this peninsula and the mainland disappeared until the peninsula becomes an island with a pass between the peninsula (Phuket Island) and Phiang-nga Province currently called Pak Phra Pass (a narrow water way with the deepest part being 8-9 meters deep only).
As for the name of Phuket for foreigners, in the past, apart from the note around A.D. 200 of Claudius Ptolemy, the Navigator, who called the land in this area ‘Takola Peninsula’, there has been another evidence of the mention of this land again the the notes and maps for navigation to the region of Southeast Asia by the European from A.D. 1511 to A.D. 1854 by which this area was called ‘Jungceylon’. Furthermore, there has been evidence of Tamil people’s calling this area ‘Mani Khram’ in A.D. 1025, which means ‘City of Diamond’ as the name ‘Phukej’ that has appeared in the Chronicle of Thalang Issue 2 in A.D. 1785. This name has been used since then until it becomes ‘Phuket’ at present, which has been in the Royal Thai Government Gazette since 1907 onward. Thus, Phuket has been mentioned in the past up to present as Takola Peninsula, Mani Khram, Jungceylon, Phukej and Phuket, and sometimes is called ‘Silan’, ‘Thalang’ and ‘Thung Kha’ as well.