History of Rice in Western and Central Asia

Nesbitt, Mark; Simpson, St John; Svanberg, Ingvar

doi:10.1201/ebk1578086801-c10

Cited by 20 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…There was also trade established during the first millennium BC between India and Southeast Asia (Fuller et al 2011b), and it is possible that the first lowland indica rices in Southeast Asia came by this means. Rice from India also came to get established in Lower Mesopotamia in the late centuries BC (Nesbitt et al 2010). …”

Section: The Dispersal Of Rice Throughout South Asia and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 97%

Pathways to Asian Civilizations: Tracing the Origins and Spread of Rice and Rice Cultures

Fuller

2011

Rice

281

235

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Modern genetics, ecology and archaeology are combined to reconstruct the domestication and diversification of rice. Early rice cultivation followed two pathways towards domestication in India and China, with selection for domestication traits in early Yangtze japonica and a non-domestication feedback system inferred for 'proto-indica'. The protracted domestication process finished around 6,500-6,000 years ago in China and about two millennia later in India, when hybridization with Chinese rice took place. Subsequently farming populations grew and expanded by migration and incorporation of pre-existing populations. These expansions can be linked to hypothetical language family dispersal models, including dispersal from China southwards by the Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian groups. In South Asia much dispersal of rice took place after Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers adopted rice from speakers of lost languages of northern India.

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Section: The Dispersal Of Rice Throughout South Asia and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 97%

Pathways to Asian Civilizations: Tracing the Origins and Spread of Rice and Rice Cultures

Fuller

2011

Rice

281

235

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“…It might be noted that by the second century BC, rice is reported from Dayuan (the Ferghana Valley) by a Chinese official, Zhang Qian of the Han Court (Nesbitt et al, 2010). Such crops likely required irrigation networks, although whether they were japonica or indica rice is unknown.…”

Section: The Origins and Evolution Of Indica Ricementioning

confidence: 99%

Between China and South Asia: A Middle Asian corridor of crop dispersal and agricultural innovation in the Bronze Age

et al. 2016

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The period from the late third millennium BC to the start of the first millennium AD witnesses the first steps towards food globalization in which a significant number of important crops and animals, independently domesticated within China, India, Africa and West Asia, traversed Central Asia greatly increasing Eurasian agricultural diversity. This paper utilizes an archaeobotanical database (AsCAD), to explore evidence for these crop translocations along southern and northern routes of interaction between east and west. To begin, crop translocations from the Near East across India and Central Asia are examined for wheat (Triticum aestivum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) from the eighth to the second millennia BC when they reach China. The case of pulses and flax (Linum usitatissimum) that only complete this journey in Han times (206 BC–AD 220), often never fully adopted, is also addressed. The discussion then turns to the Chinese millets, Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica, peaches (Amygdalus persica) and apricots (Armeniaca vulgaris), tracing their movement from the fifth millennium to the second millennium BC when the Panicum miliaceum reaches Europe and Setaria italica Northern India, with peaches and apricots present in Kashmir and Swat. Finally, the translocation of japonica rice from China to India that gave rise to indica rice is considered, possibly dating to the second millennium BC. The routes these crops travelled include those to the north via the Inner Asia Mountain Corridor, across Middle Asia, where there is good evidence for wheat, barley and the Chinese millets. The case for japonica rice, apricots and peaches is less clear, and the northern route is contrasted with that through northeast India, Tibet and west China. Not all these journeys were synchronous, and this paper highlights the selective long-distance transport of crops as an alternative to demic-diffusion of farmers with a defined crop package.

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“…Mung bean seems to be absent from Medieval cookbooks of the Islamic world, and these sources also indicate that rice played a minor role in the cuisine of the Arab world (32). Although rice was adopted into cultivation in parts of Iran and Mesopotamia more than 2,000 y ago, it was not a staple in the Middle East in the Medieval Period (33).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Ancient crops provide first archaeological signature of the westward Austronesian expansion

Crowther

Lucas

Helm

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

154

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The Austronesian settlement of the remote island of Madagascar remains one of the great puzzles of Indo-Pacific prehistory. Although linguistic, ethnographic, and genetic evidence points clearly to a colonization of Madagascar by Austronesian language-speaking people from Island Southeast Asia, decades of archaeological research have failed to locate evidence for a Southeast Asian signature in the island's early material record. Here, we present new archaeobotanical data that show that Southeast Asian settlers brought Asian crops with them when they settled in Africa. These crops provide the first, to our knowledge, reliable archaeological window into the Southeast Asian colonization of Madagascar. They additionally suggest that initial Southeast Asian settlement in Africa was not limited to Madagascar, but also extended to the Comoros. Archaeobotanical data may support a model of indirect Austronesian colonization of Madagascar from the Comoros and/or elsewhere in eastern Africa.

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History of Rice in Western and Central Asia

Cited by 20 publications

References 0 publications

Pathways to Asian Civilizations: Tracing the Origins and Spread of Rice and Rice Cultures

Pathways to Asian Civilizations: Tracing the Origins and Spread of Rice and Rice Cultures

Between China and South Asia: A Middle Asian corridor of crop dispersal and agricultural innovation in the Bronze Age

Ancient crops provide first archaeological signature of the westward Austronesian expansion

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