Adolf P. W. Bastian

Dr. Adolf Philipp Wilhelm Bastian (26 June 1826, Bremen, Germany – 2 Feb. 1905, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago), an avid traveler considered as one of the founders of modern anthropology and ethnology as scientific disciplines (as well as 'the father of German ethnology'), visited Angkor as early as 1863.

A pioneer in exploring the concept of "psychic unity of mankind", A. Bastian was a ship's doctor when he came to the shores of Southeast Asia in 1861, starting a four-year travel across the region narrated in his six-volume publication, The People of East Asia.

His accounts of Angkor and Cambodian mores were originally parts of his Reisen in Siam im Jahre 1863 (1867), and Reise dur Kambodja nach Cochinchina (1868) (collations of parts of v. 3-4 of Die Voelker des oestlichen Asien). The English version, A Journey to Cambodia and Cochinchina, by Walter. E. Tips, was published in 2005 (White Lotus Press, Bangkok).