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12 - Early agriculture in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Xinyi Liu ,
Dorian Q. Fuller  and
Martin Jones
Edited by
Graeme Barker  and
Candice Goucher
Graeme Barker
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Candice Goucher
Affiliation:
Washington State University
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Summary

To the north arena of Chinese agriculture, the Central Plain is flanked by the Gobi desert and beyond that a belt of steppe that continues westwards across Eurasia. In Western Asia early crops were processed for a flour-focused food system. While grinding stones were used in prehistoric China, boiling and steaming of grains and other foods appear to have been and remained the predominant East Asian methods for preparing foods. The ultimate expression of the East Asian culinary selection of grain quality is found in the sticky cereals, including sticky rice and sticky millets. Analyses of phytoliths recovered from Pleistocene caves on the southern margins of the Yangtze basin have also led to suggestions of Pleistocene rice domestication in the region, although clear criteria for determining either cultivation practices of rice have been lacking. While agriculture in the Yellow River region diversified through secondary domestications and adoptions and developed an ideology of diversity, early Yangtze agriculture was single-mindedly about rice.

Keywords

Nilo-Saharan linguistic recordOmotic agriculturelinguistic stratigraphyfood productionWest African agricultural practices
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 310 - 334
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further reading

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