This chapter explores the nature of coastal adaptation, and suggests its wider place in later prehistoric developments, with particular reference to the 1985 excavation of the site of Khok Phanom Di. The raised platform structure of Khok Phanom Di remains unique in Southeast Asia. The model favour visualizes rice harvesting in both the marginal and optimal zones as a component part of a flexible multi-faceted subsistence strategy. During the period under review, rice was significant more for its potential for intensification than the realization of more extensive or productive cultivation. Indeed, the first major intensification in agricultural methods probably came with the formation of centralized chiefdoms between 500 and 0 BC. The crucial issue is not the cultivation of rice, nor any other food resource, but rather the increasing domestication of human beings through the conditions of sedentism, territoriality, and the reworking of their personal relations.