Is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula. With an estimated 95.

5 million
inhabitants as of 2018, it is the 15th most populous country in the world. Vietnam shares its
land borders with China to the north, and Laos and Cambodia to the west. It shares its
maritime borders with Thailand through the Gulf of Thailand, and the Philippines,
Indonesia and Malaysia through the South China Sea. Its capital city is Hanoi, while its
most populous city is Ho Chi Minh City.
Archaeological excavations have revealed the existence of humans in what is now Vietnam as early as the
Paleolithic age. Homo erectus fossils dating to around 500,000 BC have been found in caves in Lạng Sơn
and Nghệ An provinces in northern Vietnam. The oldest Homo sapiens fossils from mainland Southeast
Asia are of Middle Pleistocene provenance, and include isolated tooth fragments from Tham Om and
Hang Hum. Teeth attributed to Homo sapiens from the Late Pleistocene have been found at Dong Can,
and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu, Lang Gao and Lang Cuom. By about 1,000 BC, the
development of wet-rice cultivation in the Ma River and Red River floodplains led to the flourishing of
Đông Sơn culture, notable for its bronze casting used to make elaborate bronze Đông Sơn drums. At this
point, the early Vietnamese kingdoms of Văn Lang and Âu Lạc appeared, and the culture's influence
spread to other parts of Southeast Asia, including Maritime Southeast Asia, throughout the first
millennium BC.
 In the 1500s, the Portuguese became acquainted with the Vietnamese coast, where they reportedly
erected a stele on the Chàm Islands to mark their presence. By 1533, they began landing in the
Vietnamese delta but were forced to leave because of local turmoil and fighting. They also had less
interest in the territory than they did in China and Japan. After having successfully settled Macau and
Nagasaki to begin the profitable Macau-Japan trade route, the Portuguese began to involve themselves in
trade with Hội An, where many Portuguese traders and Catholic missionaries set foot in the Vietnamese
kingdom. The Dutch also tried to establish contact with Vietnam through the central part of Quinam in
1601 but failed to sustain a presence there after several violent encounters with the locals. The Dutch East
India Company (VOC) only managed to establish official relations with Tonkin in the spring of 1637 after
leaving Dejima in Japan to establish trade for silk.