Domestication of rice in the Yangtze River basin
- Date
- c. 8000–6000 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- East Asia (Yangtze River, China)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
Along the lower and middle Yangtze, foragers gradually transformed wild rice (Oryza rufipogon) into domesticated japonica rice (Oryza sativa), creating one of the world's most important staple crops.
Use-wear and phytolith analyses of stone tools from sites such as Shangshan and Hehuashan show rice harvesting and management between roughly 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, while morphological changes — larger grains and, critically, the loss of natural seed shattering — mark the long transition to full domestication over several millennia. Waterlogged sites preserve spikelet bases that track this slow shift. Rice cultivation supported dense populations, encouraged the construction of paddy fields and water-management systems, and became the demographic engine of later East and Southeast Asian societies. From its Yangtze homeland, rice farming spread south into mainland Southeast Asia and, carried by Austronesian-speaking populations, into Island Southeast Asia and beyond.
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Further reading
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