Domestication of foxtail and broomcorn millet on the Yellow River
- Date
- c. 8000–6000 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- East Asia (Yellow River, China)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
In the semi-arid loess lands of northern China, Neolithic communities domesticated broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) and foxtail millet (Setaria italica), drought-tolerant cereals well suited to the Yellow River region.
Charred grains and large-scale archaeobotanical sequences from sites such as Cishan, Peiligang and Zhuzhai document increasingly domesticated millets by around 8,000 years ago, alongside the keeping of domesticated pigs and dogs. Millet farming formed the economic foundation of the Yangshao and later Longshan cultures and sustained the dense populations of the North China Plain for millennia. Between the Yellow and Yangtze basins a broad zone of mixed millet-and-rice farming developed from about 8,000 years ago, blending the two great Chinese agricultural traditions. Millet later spread westward across the Eurasian steppe, reaching Central Asia and Europe and becoming a significant component of Old World agriculture.
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Further reading
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