Chapter 1 Asia as Cultured Space 29Origins of Rice Cultivation
We know that rice originated someplace in monsoon Asia, but its prehis-
tory is far less well documented than that of wheat in the Middle East. Rice still
grows wild in the three valleys of the Red, Mekong, and Chao Phrya Rivers. All
Asian rice belongs to a single species of annual grass: Oryza sativa. There the
simplicity ends. There are over 120,000 varieties among the three subspecies,
indica, japonica (also known as sinica), and javanica. The japonica variety
evolved along a Chinese branch of the Brahmaputra River (and so the Chinese
call it sinica). And in the Indonesian islands, a third race of rice, javanica,
evolved in adaptation to equatorial conditions. The huge number of varieties is
a fabulous genetic resource that has made possible the hybridizing of a whole
set of high-yield varieties of rice (HYVs) since the 1960s. These thousands of
strains are treated as national treasures in rice-growing nations, preserved in
“germ plasm banks” where they are stored on shelves like so many tins of tuna.
Because of its efficient system for transporting oxygen from shoots to roots
(10 times better than barley and four times better than maize), rice is highly
adaptable to hot, wet, waterlogged environments such as are common through-
out monsoon Asia, where rice is typically grown in several inches of water
throughout most of its growing cycle. It was probably in such environments
that rice as a cultivar first evolved, with later adaptations to dry “hill rice” con-
ditions. A second characteristic of rice is its extreme photosensitivity, requiring
a precise number of minutes of sunlight per day at various stages of its growing
season. This is why thousands of varieties have emerged in adaptation to
micro-regions throughout monsoon Asia. It is this photosensitivity that
required emergence of the javanica subspecies before rice could survive in the
very different solar conditions of the equatorial region.
In the search for the origin of rice cultivation, however, the picture is not
yet clear. Archaeology in Southeast Asia has documented a long period of suc-
cessful foraging by peoples such as those who inhabited Spirit Cave in the
northwestern hills of Thailand, and there is no easy explanation why they gave
up their adaptation for the hard work of rice cultivation (Higham 1984). We
assume it took some kind of as-yet unidentified pressure to push them to it.
The oldest phase of the Chinese Neolithic is about 6000 B.C.E., but that was
based on millet, not rice, in the Huanghe basin. The oldest sites of rice cultivat-
ing appear to be in southern Chinese coastal areas, running down as far south
as the Red River basin in Vietnam. At the site of Hemudu in Zhejiang Prov-
ince, dated at 5000 B.C.E., is a whole Neolithic assemblage: pottery, carpentry,
stone adzes, boats, paddles, spindle whorls for weaving, ropes and mats, evi-
dence of domesticated pigs, dogs, chickens, possibly cattle and water buffalo—
and lots of rice. There were layers of rice husks, grains, straw, and leaves 20
inches thick. Bellwood summarizes:
The main significance of southern China, and one which becomes ever
firmer as the archaeological record unfolds, is that it was the zone where