Abstract
We have compiled an extensive database of archaeological evidence for rice across Asia, including 400 sites from mainland East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. This dataset is used to compare several models for the geographical origins of rice cultivation and infer the most likely region(s) for its origins and subsequent outward diffusion. The approach is based on regression modelling wherein goodness of fit is obtained from power law quantile regressions of the archaeologically inferred age versus a least-cost distance from the putative origin(s). The Fast Marching method is used to estimate the least-cost distances based on simple geographical features. The origin region that best fits the archaeobotanical data is also compared to other hypothetical geographical origins derived from the literature, including from genetics, archaeology and historical linguistics. The model that best fits all available archaeological evidence is a dual origin model with two centres for the cultivation and dispersal of rice focused on the Middle Yangtze and the Lower Yangtze valleys.
Highlights
Rice is one of the major world crops, and more than any other, has supported dense human populations and state systems in eastern, southern and southeast Asia through much of history and later prehistory (e.g. [1,2,3])
This area lies in the region with the oldest known archaeological evidence for rice domestication in Asia and this demonstrates that identifying the wider Yangtze valley as the oldest centre of innovation for rice farming is not a fluke of archaeological sampling, but that it is supported by the entirety of available archaeological evidence for the presence of cultivated rice in Asia
In this paper we present results of the spatial modelling for the origins of rice cultivation that lead to the original domestication or domestications of Oryza sativa subsp. japonica
Summary
Rice is one of the major world crops, and more than any other, has supported dense human populations and state systems in eastern, southern and southeast Asia through much of history and later prehistory (e.g. [1,2,3]). Rice is one of the major world crops, and more than any other, has supported dense human populations and state systems in eastern, southern and southeast Asia through much of history and later prehistory The origins and spread of cultivated rice has been a major research theme in the archaeology of China, Southeast Asia and India, as well as amongst rice scientists working on genetic diversity [11]), from phytoliths in archaeological sites Methodological issues surrounding how to distinguish between archaeobotanical evidence for and model the evolutionary separation of wild gathered rice, pre-domestication cultivation and domestication processes have been increasingly addressed in recent years Recent research has distinguished a phase of pre-domestication cultivation, lasting two to three.
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