Rice domestication
Domesticación del arroz
- Date
- c. 7500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Shangshan and Kuahuqiao, lower Yangtze, Zhejiang, China
- Credited to
- Shangshan and Kuahuqiao-Hemudu cultures
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Cultivation of Oryza rufipogon in the marshes of the lower Yangtze, with a progressive increase in non-shattering rachis leading to domestic japonica rice (c. 6000 BCE, Tianluoshan). It feeds half of humanity today.
Indica rice was domesticated separately in South Asia (with introgression from japonica); Oryza glaberrima in the Niger Delta is an independent African domestication (c. 1500 BCE).
What it led to
- Extremely high-yield flooded agriculture per hectare and the population density of East Asia
- Collective water management: dikes, paddies and cooperative labour
- The spread of Austroasiatic and Austronesian languages together with rice
Built on
- Composite flint sicklec. 9500 BCE
- Wild rice gathering
- East Asian pottery
Made possible
- Fermented rice, honey and fruit beveragec. 7000 BCE
- Polished stone hoec. 7000 BCE
- Independent pig domestication in Chinac. 6600 BCE
- Chicken domesticationc. 5400 BCE (muy discutido)
- Irrigated paddy fieldc. 4200 BCE
- Indica rice domesticationc. 2000 BCE
- Subak irrigation system882 (primera mención)
- Ifugao rice terracesc. 1650 (muy discutido)
- Rice wine
- Rice-cooking pottery