According to legend, the earliest Tibetans came from the union of the ogress, Sinmo, and a monkey, reincarnation of the god Chenresi, on the mountain of Gangpo Ri near Tsetang. Ethnographers, however, think it likely the Tibetans are descended from the nomadic Ch'iang who roamed eastern Central Asia, to the northwest of China, several thousand years ago. The first Tibetan king, Nyatri Tsenpo, believed to have come to earth via a magical "sky-cord", was the first of a long lineage of 27 kings who ruled in a pre-Buddhist era when the indigenous, shamanistic Bon religion held sway throughout the land.

Each of the early kings held power over a small area and it was not until the time of King Songtsen Gampo, the thirty-third ruler in the dynasty, born in 617 AD, that expansionism began. Songtsen Gampo's twenty-year rule saw the unification of the country and aggressive spread of his empire from Northern India to China. To placate their assertive neighbour, China and Nepal each offered Songtsen Gampo a wife: in 632 he married Princess Bhrikuti (also known as Tritsun) of Nepal and in 641 Princess Wencheng arrived from the Tang court sent by her father, Emperor Taizong. They both brought their Buddhist faith and magnificent statues of the Buddha which are now the centrepieces of Ramoche temple and the Jokhang in Lhasa.

Whilst the geographical boundaries of Tibet always made outside contact difficult, it is apparent that as early as the seventh century there was considerable cultural exchange between Tibet and its neighbours. Pens, ink, silks, jewels and probably tea reached Tibet from China in the seventh century and Tibet for many centuries looked to India for religious teaching.

Songtsen Gampo embraced the Buddhist faith and established Buddhist temples throughout the country, although the indigenous Bon faith remained the religion of the ordinary people. Following his death in 650, his descendants strengthened the kingdom politically, and in 763 Tibetan armies even took the Chinese capital Chang'an (modern Xi'an). Trisong Detsen (742-797) was another champion of the new faith who invited two Indian Buddhist teachers to Tibet, Shantarakshita and the charismatic and flamboyant Padmasambhava , also known as Guru Rinpoche, who is regarded as responsible for overcoming the resistance of the Bon religion and ensuring the spread of Buddhism within Tibet. Although he is closely associated with the Nyingma school of Buddhism, you'll spot his image somewhere in most temples.

In 838, the infamous Langdarma came to the throne, having assassinated his brother. A fervent supporter of Bon, he set about annihilating the Buddhist faith. Temples and monasteries were destroyed, monks forced to flee and the previously unified Tibet broke up into a number of small principalities. A Buddhist revival involving monastery construction, the translation of scriptures into Tibetan and the establishment of several of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism was spearheaded by the arrival of Atisha (982-1054), the most famous Indian scholar of the time. Politically the country was not united but the various independent principalities lived largely in harmony and there was little contact with China.

Absorbed in internal events, the Tibetans had largely neglected the outside world where the Muslim surge across India in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries resulted in the destruction of the great Buddhist centres of teaching to which the Tibetans had looked for generations. And to the north and east of Tibet the Mongol leader , Genghis Khan, was beginning his assault on China. In 1207 Genghis Khan sent envoys to Tibet demanding submission, which was given without a fight, and the territory was largely ignored until Genghis Khan's grandson, Godan, sent raiding parties deep into the country. Hearing from his troops about the spirituality of the Tibetan lamas, Godan invited the head of the Sakya order, Sakya Pandita, to his court. In exchange for peace, Sakya Pandita again offered Tibetan submission and was created regent of Tibet at the Mongolian court, making the Sakya lamas the effective rulers of Tibet under the patronage of the emperor. This lasted through the generations with Godan's son, Kublai Khan , deeply impressed by Sakya Pandita's nephew, Phagpa.

When the Chinese Ming dynasty overcame the Mongols in the fourteenth century, Tibet began a long period of independence which ended in 1642 with the Mongols intervening directly in support of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Lobsang Gyatso, of the Gelugpa order .

The Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682), often referred to as " the Great Fifth ", united the country under Gelugpa rule and within fifteen years, largely neglected by Mongol rulers, he established authority from Kham to Kailash, the first time that one religious and political leader had united and ruled the country. He invited scholars to Tibet, restored and expanded religious institutions and began work on the Potala in Lhasa. One disadvantage of the reincarnation system of succession (in which a new-born child is identified as the next manifestation of the dead lama) is that an unstable period of fifteen or twenty years inevitably follows a death while the next reincarnation grows to adulthood. Initially, the death of the Fifth Dalai Lama in 1682 was concealed by his regent, Sangye Gyatso, who claimed he had entered a period of solitary meditation and meanwhile raised the Sixth Dalai Lama to adulthood.

The following two centuries saw no strong leadership from the Dalai Lamas with repeated incursions by Mongolian factions. The most influential figures in Tibet at this time were the regents and representatives of the Manchu rulers in China, the ambans. During the nineteenth century , Tibet became increasingly isolationist, fearing Russian plans to expand their empire south and British plans to expand their empire north. Seeing themselves caught in the middle, the Tibetans simply banned foreigners from their land. Tibetan fears appeared justified in 1904 when the British, equally concerned about Russian and Chinese plans, invaded under Younghusband, marching up to Gyantse through the Chumbi Valley and eventually on to Lhasa. However, a series of British Representatives in Lhasa forged good relationships with Tibet and became a window on the outside world. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama , Tubten Gyatso (1876-1933), was an insightful and capable leader who realized that Tibet's political position needed urgent clarification, but he had a difficult rule, fleeing into exile twice, and was much occupied with border fighting against the Chinese and tensions with conservatives inside the country. Following his death, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was identified in Amdo in 1938 and was still a young man when world events began to close in on Tibet. The British left India in 1947, withdrawing their Representative from Lhasa. In 1949 the Communists under Mao Zedong created the People's Republic of China and the following year declared their intention "to liberate the oppressed and exploited Tibetans and reunite them with the great motherland". In October 1950, the People's Liberation Army invaded the Kham region of eastern Tibet before proceeding to Lhasa the following year. Under considerable duress, Tibet signed a seventeen-point treaty in 1951, allowing for the "peaceful integration of Tibet".

Initially the Chinese offered goodwill and modernization. Tibet had made little headway into the twentieth century; there were few roads, no electricity, and glass windows, steel girders and concrete were all recent introductions. Hygiene and health care were patchy and lay education was unavailable. While some Tibetans viewed modernization as necessary, the opposition was stiff, as many within the religious hierarchy saw changes within the country and overtures to the outside world as a threat to their influence. Throughout the 1950s an underground resistance operated which flared into a public confrontation in March 1959, fuelled by mounting distrust and hostility, as refugees from eastern Tibet fled to Lhasa and told of the brutality of Chinese rule. In Lhasa the Chinese invited the Dalai Lama to a theatrical performance at the Chinese military base. It was popularly perceived as a ploy to kidnap him, and huge numbers of Tibetans mounted demonstrations and surrounded the Norbulingka where the Dalai Lama was staying. On the night of March 17, the Dalai Lama and his entourage escaped, heading into exile in India where they were later joined (and are still joined today) by tens of thousands of refugees.

Meanwhile the uprising in Lhasa was ferociously suppressed - 87,000 people were killed by the Chinese between March 1959 and September 1960. From that point on all pretence of goodwill vanished, and a huge military force moved in, with a Chinese bureaucracy replacing Tibetan institutions. Temples and monasteries were destroyed and Chinese agricultural policies proved particularly disastrous. During the years of the Great Leap Forward (1959-60) it is estimated that ten percent of Tibetans starved, and it wasn't until the early 1980s that the food situation in Tibet began to improve. Harrowing accounts tell of parents mixing their own blood with hot water and tsampa to feed their children.

In September 1965 the U-Tsang and Western areas of Tibet officially became the Xizang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, but more significant was the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) during which mass destruction of religious monuments and practices took place under the orders of the Red Guards, some of them young Tibetans. In 1959 there were 2700 monasteries and temples in Tibet; by 1978 there were just eight monasteries and fewer than a thousand monks and nuns in the TAR.

Liberalization followed Mao's death in 1976, leading to a period of relative openness and peace in the early 1980s when monasteries were rebuilt, religion revived and tourism was restored. By the end of the decade, repression was again in place following riots in Lhasa in 1988-9 but in the early 1990s foreigners were allowed back and the current mood seems to be one of apparent openness, with the encouragement of tourism against a background of increased internal control of the Tibetan population. Dissent is ruthlessly quashed and there are currently between six and seven hundred political detainees, more than at any time since 1990. While the true figures will never be known, estimates of three hundred thousand to one million have been given for the number of Tibetans who have perished either directly at the hands of the Chinese or indirectly through starvation and hardship. The International Commission of Jurists in the Hague has held the People's Republic of China to be guilty of genocide.

Meanwhile, the profile of the Tibetan Government in Exile based in Dharamsala in northern India, representing 130,000 Tibetan refugees and led by the Dalai Lama, continues to increase. The world community has refused to take a stand for the Tibetans yet the Dalai Lama, earthly incarnation of the god Chenresi, known to the Tibetans as Gyalwa Rinpoche, has never faltered from advocating a peaceful solution for Tibet which led to his being awarded the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.

For the Tibetans who remain here the reality of life in Tibet is harsh. China admits that a quarter of the TAR counties cannot feed or clothe themselves, one third of children do not go to school and Tibet's literacy rate is about thirty percent, the lowest in China. Between 1952 and 1998 it is estimated that China subsidized the TAR to the tune of 40 billion yuan - yet Tibetans are among the poorest people in China and have the lowest life expectancy in the country. As Tibet provides the Chinese with land for their exploding population along with almost untold natural resources, the influx of Han Chinese settlers threatens to swamp the Tibetan population, culture and economy.