Farmers in Guizhou Province in southern China transplanting rice by hand in a flooded paddy  Photo: BTIME

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China has long been known as one of the centers where the agriculture first developed. Agriculture in China originated from two sites—the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River engaged in rice production and the Yellow River basin featured the cultivation of shu (broomcorn millet) and su (foxtail millet). Archaeologists also discovered potential evidence of another origin of agriculture along the Pearl River, characterized by the cultivation of tropical root vegetables such as taro roots.
 

The history of agriculture is a long-term social and economic transition. Archaeological records indicate that one of the oldest transitions from the earliest instances of farming to the establishment of an agrarian society has been identified as dating to between 10,000 and 5,000 years before the present (BP) in China. During this transition, hunting and gathering practices were gradually replaced by farming. The establishment of an economy based on the production and maintenance of crops and farmland, rather than hunting and gathering practices, signalled the advent of the agrarian society.

 

“Rice in the south”
Most domesticated crops appeared approximately 10,000 years ago, directly correlating with global climate change between the late Pleistocene (2,588,000–11,700 BP) and the early Holocene (11,700 BP–present). In China, the remains of ancient rice dating back to 10,000 BP were excavated from four archaeological sites, including the Xianren Cave and the nearby Diaotonghuan Cave in Wannian County, Jiangxi Province, the Yuchanyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan Province, and the Shangshan site in Pujiang County, Zhejiang Province. The Shangshan site is an open-air site, where there is only one possible instance of human habitation in the form of sheltered domiciles. This indicates that people of that period still lived in seasonal settlement arrangements.

A large amount of animal bones were discovered from the aforementioned four sites, identified as the bones of wild animals. The unearthed stone tools and polished bones were considered to be used for hunting and there was no established evidence of farming tools, indicating that most of the people at that time were still hunter-gatherers. However, the remains of rice discovered from these sites reflect that rice had probably become an essential crop for human beings at the time. While collecting wild rice, ancient people might have started to cultivate crops.

Farming is a particular concept in the study of the origin of agriculture, referring to all human activities aimed at growing crops or plants, including preparation of the soil for planting, seeding and weeding. The emergence of farming represents a movement towards agriculture.

The period around 8,000 BP was crucial to the origins of agriculture, characterized by well-developed settlements and the emergence of early villages, standardized pottery-making and increased use of polished stone tools. This represents the beginning of farming life and the domestication of animals. Until now all the excavated archaeological sites in China featuring rice production have dated back to this period. Remains of rice were discovered from these sites, together with remains of weeds suggesting the presence of early farming at that time. Excavations also show that people gathered a wide range of wild plants such as water caltrop and lotus root. Most of the excavated animal remains belonged to wild animals, such as deer, and the remains of domesticated animals were quite rare, indicating that the domestication of animals at that time had just begun. Agriculture at its origin stage developed over a relatively long period. Early in this period, people depended on hunting and gathering as a main food source. Rice cultivation and animal domestication that represent agricultural activity were merely supplementary ways of living.

The Hemudu culture (7,000–6,000 BP) means a lot to the study of the origins of rice cultivation. Early in the 21st century, a contemporaneous site, known as the Tianluoshan site, was discovered near the Hemudu site. The excavations involved a variety of remains of plant seeds, such as rice, water caltrop, acorn and Euryale. Quantitative analysis shows that rice had become the main food during the period of the Hemudu culture, while gathered food such as acorns and Euryale seeds were still essential for humans. According to the analysis, though the society depended on the cultivation of rice during the period of the Hemudu culture, gathering and hunting still had to make up for the poor yield of rice.

The process of the origination of rice cultivation finished in the period of the Liangzhu culture between 5,200 and 4,300 BP. The Liangzhu culture was a late Neolithic culture. There is a remarkable increase in the number of archeological sites dating to this period, reflecting a surge in the population of that time, which may have resulted from the rapid development of rice cultivation. Based on these findings, it is believed that the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River had transformed into a society based on rice cultivation by the period of the Liangzhu culture at the latest.

 

“Millet in the north”
The origin and development of dry land farming in northern China was similar to wet-rice production in the south with slight differences. Well-developed limestone caves are abundant in southern China, an area where many sites dating from between the late Paleolithic (3,000,000–10,000 BP) and the early Neolithic (10,000–2,000 BP) periods have been discovered. Unlike the south, there are only a few contemporary sites in the north and most of them are open-air. Among those sites, archeologists found a few charred grains of foxtail millet in the Donghulin site (15,000–9,000 BP) located in Beijing. There is no trace of residence in this site and the excavated animal bones are all identified as belonging to wild animals, suggesting that the Donghulin men were probably hunters and gatherers who settled depending upon environmental conditions. However, the charred grains of foxtail millet indicate that the domestication of millet may have begun at that time.

Most of the early archeological sites featuring agricultural culture excavated in northern China date back to 8,000 BP, an important period for the origin of agriculture. Remains of broomcorn millet and foxtail millet have been found from those sites, implying that the north was developing in the same way as the south during the early stage of dry land agriculture, in which farming was merely a supplementary way of living at the time.

The Yangshao culture (7,000–5,000 BP) was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the valleys of the Wei River and the middle Yellow River in northern China, during which the ancient civilization in the north rapidly developed. More than 2,000 sites that developed in this period have been discovered around the basin of the Yellow River. Based on the study of the ancient plants found from those sites, agriculture had played an important part in the society around 6,500 BP. People still gathered wild edible plants as a food source, however. Farming practices increased as the society developed. Until the middle stage of the Yangshao culture (5,500 BP), dry land farming featured the cultivation of broomcorn millet and foxtail millet, which had become the mainstay of the economy, a strong indication that people were moving towards agriculture.

After the early communities started to be substantially dependent on agriculture, the technique and scale of rice production had improved, and rice has remained the most important crop in the south to this day. By 4,000 BP, wheat was introduced from Western Asia into China, causing great change in the major millet-producing regions of northern China. Because of its high yield, wheat gradually took the place of millet and became the main crop in northern China. Since then, agriculture in China has reflected the characteristics of a dualistic structure with wheat in the north and rice in the south.

 

Zhao Zhijun is a research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

​edited by CHEN MIRONG