The origin of agriculture in East Asia: domestication, food globalisation and environmental change
Beijing, April 13, 2021, the newly excavated archaeological site in northwestern Ningbo, Jingtoushan, was officially announced to be amongst China’s ten most significant archaeological discoveries in 2020. The discovery of the Jingtoushan site (dating to ca. 8300–7800 BP, Before Present) attracted wide academic and public interests alike, since it pushed the earliest human occupation of Ningbo back for more than 1000 years, the earliest known Neolithic cultural complex before its discovery having been the Hemudu (dating to ca. 7000–5000 BP). Why settlement sites such as Jingtoushan and Hemudu (the type site for the Hemudu cultural complex), and the Neolithic Zhejiang in general, are so important in archaeology of China and of the world? What is the value to understand our past when we face today and future’s environmental and social challenges? Today, we invited Dr Tengwen Long from School of Geographical Sciences to talk about the significance of archaeology and his research on the Neolithic Zhejiang.
We might rarely realise that food in our everyday life, such as cereals, fruits, vegetables, and legumes, in fact resulted from domestication of their wild relatives by our ancestors using thousands of years. The complex relationship between humans and the food that they produce can be traced back to the distant prehistory. Agriculture first appeared only in a limited number of regions globally, such as the Near East, South America, western Africa, and East Asia. Through long-term interactions (e.g. gathering seeds to eat, using stalks to make pottery) with wild plants, prehistoric communities who lived in these regions became more familiar with characteristics of the plants. They started to cultivate the wild species and intentionally or unintentionally selected features that are favourable for human use. For example, people might have continuously seeded and harvested caryopses that have larger sizes and are easier to break at the spikelet base, since their harvested seeds were more convenient for collection and consumption. This process eventually led to the appearance of new, human-influenced plant species.
Global centres for crop domestication
Domestication of wild species and a gradual reliance on agriculture in subsistence were two accompanying processes. Agriculture provided a more reliable food supply for the society and could support a higher level of population in same area of land when compared with hunting and gathering. Agriculture led to population growth and accumulation of social surplus, which facilitated the appearance of more sophisticated socio-economic activities, such as craftsmanship, religions, and hydro-engineering projects, resulting in social diversification and civilisations in the end. According to archaeological evidence, from ca. 6000–5000 BP, the earliest urban settlement sites and states appeared in some early agricultural centres, notably the Near East. Large-scale warfare and accumulation of wealth became a catalyser for the society’s accelerated development.
Asian rice is amongst the earliest domesticates in human history. Today, it is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population and is of key importance for global food security. It is rice that makes Zhejiang so special in the world’s history of agriculture. Hemudu archaeological site, northwestern Ningbo, was discovered in the 1970s. Systematic excavation of this site led to some discoveries that astonished the world. The Yellow River basin was long considered to be the source of Chinese civilisation, but the early age (dating to ca. 7000–5000 BP) of Hemudu site and large amounts of rice remains make it a milestone in Chinese archeology, leading to a proposal that Yangzi River basin was also home to a great civilisation. The Hemudu cultural complex, together with the Majiabang, Songze, and Liangzhu complexes north of Hangzhou Bay, form the regional Neolithic sequence. The development of this cultural sequence was accompanied by the origin of rice-based agriculture. Moreover, the Kuahuqiao and Shangshan cultural complexes, discovered in the 2000s, traced human exploitation of rice back to, respectively, 8000 and 10,000 BP. Although Jingtoushan is a shell mound site, archaeologists managed to recover some rice remains in the archaeobotanical assemblages. With further investigations in this region, it can be expected to track the trajectory of the shift towards rice cultivation in human subsistence. This is in fact the reason why the numerous prehistoric sites in the Yaojiang valley, such as Jingtoushan, Hemudu, and Tianluoshan, are so important in archaeology. Rice domestication was completed towards the Songze and Liangzhu cultural periods (ca. 6000–4000 BP). Liangzhu, as one of the most important prehistoric cultures in China and worldwide, is the peak of Neolithic in the Hangzhou Bay region, characterised by delicate jade objects and mysterious rituals. It is often cited as ‘the dawn of civilisation’, when urban settlements and chiefdoms started to appear. As a type site for the Liangzhu cultural complex, the archaeological ruins of Liangzhu city in today’s Hangzhou was selected as a World Heritage Site in 2019.
The earliest evidence of rice use in the Hangzhou Bay region: Shangshan archaeological site, ca. 10,000 BP
The first canoe in China: Kuahuqiao archaeological site, ca. 8000 BP
However, the story of rice did not end in the Yangzi River basin. In addition to those who decided to stay, there were also rice farmers who were determined to travel. Generation after generation, they managed to migrate across Asia and beyond. They spread rice and rice cultivation techniques far and wide; they changed the landscape along their migration routes. Forest clearance, terraced fields, and establishment of villages, are all examples of such changes. Some researchers suggested that Anthropocene in fact did not start from the first atomic bombing nor from the Industrial Revolution, but from the expansion of rice-based agriculture. High levels of greenhouse gases emitted from wet rice-based agriculture, notably methane, significantly changed the global carbon cycle since ca. 6000 BP. The geological epoch Holocene is fundamentally different from previous interglacials in the Quaternary. Also, Zhejiang should have been a key passage for the spread of Austronesian-speaking people, who now live widely across the islands in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. Their ancestors should have migrated following the coastlines of eastern China, passing Zhejiang and Fujian, sailing towards Taiwan, Philippines, and beyond, completing their epic adventures in Madagascar and New Zealand. Rice was an integral component of the crops that these island dwellers managed. Today, there are more than 1200 languages in the Austronesian language family, with more than 200 million native speakers. A humble seed has changed the entire planet.
Rice remains from Hemudu and Tianluoshan archaeological sites, ca. 7000 BP
Dr. Tengwen Long (School of Geographical Sciences) has focused his research on early agriculture for more than a decade. He is interested in using palaeoecological, geochemical, and radiocarbon (14C) techniques to reconstruct the long-term trajectory of agricultural development in the Eurasia continent. In 2018, as the leading author, he published the earliest evidence of wheat remains in China in Nature Plants. Cultural connections across Eurasia were not started from the Historical Silk Road that date to the Han Dynasty, but probably from the terminal Neolithic and early Bronze Age, almost three millennia earlier. This was the first episode of food globalisation: Wheat and barley, domesticated in the Near East, were spread to East Asia, while millets and rice, domesticated in China, were spread to western Eurasia. The route for such connections, however, was significantly different from the Historical Silk Road: This earlier route followed the much northern Eurasian steppe, where nomadic people who domesticated horse migrated through. In 2019, he co-authored a paper in Science Advances by reconstructing the origin of common millet and foxtail millet, which are two key domesticates in East Asia and attributed to the formation of Sino-Tibetan language family. New results from the study indicated that domestication of millets might have started in an East Asian ‘Fertile Crescent‘: the region surrounding Bohai Bay. Moreover, intensification of agricultural activities in North China around 6000 BP might closely link to the expansion of Sino-Tibetan language family in East Asia.
Carbonised wheat remains from prehistoric lower Yellow River region
Tengwen’s research on the Hangzhou Bay region started from 2009, with an interest to examine the environmental context of the origin and development of rice-based agriculture. He and co-authors established that frequent flooding in this low-lying landscape should have been responsible for the prolonged domestication process of rice, which lasted for at least several millennia. In the last two years, his work focused on possible influence of long-term climate change and sea level variations on cultural development in Hangzhou Bay. In 2020, he and co-authors reconstructed the history for the spread of rice, from South China passing North China to the Korean Peninsula and Japanese Archipelago. In the Japanese Archipelago, the spread of rice marked a transition from the Jomon to Yayoi cultural complex. Both the political turmoil between the Shang and Zhou Dynasties in China and large-scale climate change corresponding to the mid- and late Holocene transition were possible triggers for rice farmers’ migrations in North China. Lately, he has been co-editing a special issue for the journal Quaternary International, titled ‘Holocene Environments, Human Subsistence and Adaptation in Northern and Eastern Eurasia’, which creates a platform for further discussions on the origin of agriculture in North and East Asia.
Sediment coring in the Hangzhou Bay region by the research team
Since 2020, global food prices have been rising significantly, in response to COVID-19 pandemic, desert locust infestation, and droughts in Southeast Asia. Food security is being re-discussed as an international concern. How can the society develop a system of low-carbon, water-saving agriculture in the context of global environmental change, to feed increasing populations worldwide, remains to be a key challenge for our future sustainable development. But only by understanding our past and evaluating challenges in front of us in a long-term context, our society can make evidence-based policies and plans in a more reasonable way. Understanding the origin of agriculture is a highly interdisciplinary challenge and requires close collaborations between physical, social, and humanistic scientists. There is a strong need to break the boundaries between traditional disciplines and to integrate different techniques, such as ancient DNA, pollen, stable isotopes, and historical linguistics, in a holistic way, if we aim to piece fragmentary evidence together into a coherent history that can shed light on our present and future.
About author
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Geographical Sciences / Faculty of Science and Engineering
Associate Professor in Geographical Sciences
Dr. Tengwen Long’s research focuses on human-environmental interactions over different time-scales. He is particularly keen for interdisciplinary collaborations, as his research field closely integrates different traditional disciplines, including Earth sciences, biosciences, and historical social sciences. He currently serves as a reviewer for a series of academic journals focusing on human-environmental issues, such as Science Advances, Nature Plants, and Quaternary Science Reviews. He also sits as a guest editor for Quaternary International.