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Kushan Period rice in the Amu Darya Basin: Evidence for prehistoric exchange along the southern Himalaya

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Abstract

The origins and prehistoric spread of rice agriculture between East and West Asia are hot topics in the current archaeological community. In this study, we present the results from a preliminary archaeobotanical study at the Khalchayan site in Uzbekistan, where we recovered the oldest securely dated rice thus far identified in Central Asia. We directly dated the rice grains to 1714-1756 cal yr BP (Kushan period), and morphologically compared them with other contemporaneous cultivated rice remains from China and India. The morphological results showed that the rice remains found at Khalchayan are more similar to cultivated japonica rice from southern China and northwestern India. Integrated archeological and chronological results from the surrounding area show that the rice remains found at Khalchayan likely spread along a southern Himalayan route from southwest China to northern India and finally reached the Amu Darya. The rice remains from Khalchayan are the first directly dated and well-reported rice remains found in Central Asia. By the Islamic period, rice was an important culinary aspect of the culture in Central Asia, but the cultural affinity towards rice only developed over the past two millennia. This study provides new information on the spread of rice agriculture globally, especially in arid-semiarid inland regions.

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Acknowledgements

This study is part of the joint archaeological work of China and Uzbekistan. We are grateful to Professor Annaev Tukhuash from University of Temez, Uzbekistan and Navbatov Djasur for their help in the field. We also thank the two reviewers who provided valuable comments. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41572161 & 41730319) and the Strategic Priority Research Progarm of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB26000000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100044, China

    Guanhan Chen, Xinying Zhou & Xiaoqiang Li

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing, 100044, China

    Guanhan Chen, Xinying Zhou & Xiaoqiang Li

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Guanhan Chen, Xinying Zhou & Xiaoqiang Li

  4. College of Cultural Heritage, Northwest University, Xi’an, 710069, China

    Jianxin Wang, Jian Ma & Nasibillo Khasanov

  5. Institute of Archaeology, Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Samarqand, 140151, Uzbekistan

    Mutalibjon Khasannov & Amridin Berdimurodov

  6. Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, 07745, Germany

    Robert N. Spengler

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  1. Guanhan Chen
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  2. Xinying Zhou
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Chen, G., Zhou, X., Wang, J. et al. Kushan Period rice in the Amu Darya Basin: Evidence for prehistoric exchange along the southern Himalaya. Sci. China Earth Sci. 63, 841–851 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-019-9585-2

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