On the origin of rice agriculture in southern China and its propagation in East Asia

Abstract

Based on the archaeological rice cultivation with the¹⁴C dating of about 4000–5000 a B.P. the author holds that the plain at the lower reaches of the Changjiang (Yangtze) River is one origin of rice cultivation in Asia and the other is Allahabad of India. The propagation of ancient rice cultivation in China can be divided into three stages, namely 4000–3000, 2635–2420 and about 1000 a B.P. It is inferred that there were two ways for propagating rice cultivation from China to Japan. One was from lower reaches of Changjiang River to Kyushu by sea way and the other was from Shandong Peninsula to southern Korea and then to Kyushu. The age of propagating rice cultivation into Vietnam from South China is about 1000 a B.P. Being influenced by climatic changes since about 5000 a B.P. the propagation of rice cultivation was stagnated for two times at least, for example, the three warm climatic stages and the two cold stages were quite in correspondence with the propagation and stagnation stages of rice cultivation, respectively, in China. During the ancient times the development of paddy rice was directive related to the fluctuation of sea level which is in keeping with the climatic changes.