African rice (Oryza glaberrima) domestication
Domesticación del arroz africano
- Date
- c. 800 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Dia, inland Niger Delta, Mopti, Mali
- Credited to
- Farmers of the inland Niger Delta
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Selection of Oryza glaberrima from the wild rice O. barthii, a species distinct from Asian rice. Its cultivation by flooding and in mangroves sustained cities such as Jenné-Jeno.
Portères proposed the inland Niger Delta; genomics (Cubry et al., 2018) suggests a more diffuse process. Domestic grains from the first millennium BCE have been found at Dia.
What it led to
- urbanism in the inland Niger Delta
- mangrove rice fields on the coast from Senegal to Sierra Leone
- rice-growing knowledge carried by enslaved Africans to South Carolina and Brazil