DISCUSSION OF CHINESE DOMESTICATED RICE
- 10,000 YEAR-OLD RICE AT XIANRENDONG, JIANGXI PROVINCE
ZHANG, Pei Qi
Xiantao Middle School, Wuhan, Hubei Province
(Second Session of International Symposium on Agricultural Archaeology, Oct., 1997, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province,
PRC.
OCR scan by P. Hsueh, transl/interpr/ed. by Bryan Gordon & Elaine Wong; 2nd edit by G. Leir, A. Craig and Bryan
Gordon)
Abstract: (F. Bayerl; B. Gordon) The area of Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi offered ideal conditions for
rice cultivation: subtropical, moist and windy, with wild rice present. Domesticated rice resulted from
casual transplanting and cultivation of ancient wild rice from nearby sources. Xianrendong is said by
Li Fan to have 14,000 year-old paddy rice phytoliths. This area was the final location of the Bo people
whose staple food was grain. The Taohua people at Dongting Lake co-operated with the Bo, expanding
the planted area to eventually include the Pengtoushan site where paddy rice agriculture began 9,000
years ago. The author rules out other possible origin sites like Jia Lake and Yuchanyan. The Lower
Huai River may well be another site of paddy rice origin, but archaeological data are few and shallow,
so it remains unproven.
In late October of 1997, the editing department of Agricultural Archaeology organized the
Second Session of the International Symposium on Agricultural Archaeology in the city of
Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. With 110 domestic and 20 foreign scholars from America, Korea,
Romania, Japan and Canada, it was a grand international meeting, with everyone speaking freely
in a warm atmosphere discussing when, where and how paddy rice originated. Of more than 11
issues discussed (1)*, five were outstanding: Dao County’s 12,000 year-old Yuchanyan and Li
County’s 9000 year-old Pengtoushan sites in Hunan Province; Wuyang County’s 8500 year-old
Jia Lake site in Henan Province; Jiangxi Province’s 20,000 year-old Xianrendong site and the
lower Huai River site. Everyone “hoped to pinpoint rice origin” (2) because not all sites could be
such. The short conference precluded discussion, so further analyses are needed. Where, when
and how was China's rice domesticated?
Xiangkun Wang introduced four prerequisites for a rice place of origin: oldest cultivated
rice remains, existence of wild rice, evidence of human existence, and suitable natural
environment (3). He proposed that Chinese paddy rice cultivation began in the middle and lower
Yangtze Basin, which I accept, but can only confirm with concrete answers. I once proposed that
rice was domesticated in Xianrendong-Bo River in Jiangxi Province (4), but this conference
provides more detail:
(1) UNIQUE CONDITIONS AT XIANRENDONG LEADING TO RICE
DOMESTICATION
As the social activity of domesticating rice needed a specific environment which was
absent several dozen millennia ago, further steps were impossible until conditions improved.
Hills surround the 1 km wide Dayuan Basin (now paddy fields) where 10,000 year-old
Xianrendong lies on the western slope of the Wuyi Range. Its long, winding dark tunnel opens
*
bracketed superscripts refer to endnotes; unbracketed superscripts are editorial footnotes.
1
onto a sunny 10 m terrace above a small creek, which later joins the 100-200 km long Bo River
winding to Boyang Lake.
The climate is subtropical moist, with monsoon winds in spring and summer rainstorms
ripening the plums. Mean annual precipitation is 1300-2000 mm, with April-June precipitation
comprising one-half; fine for planting two annual rice crops, one of which turns golden-yellow in
late autumn.
Xianrendong is 5 m wide and 5-7 m high, with a 30-50 sq. m entrance having most
excavated artifacts. The collapsed Diaotonghuan cave is 800 m southwest on a small 30-50 m
north-south ridge. Its east-west tunnel with remnant 4-5 m high arch resembles a bottomless
bucket on its side. Its 50 sq. m was probably used for drying plants, fruits and seeds, plus a toolmaking workshop based on many bones. It is airy, dry and cool, suggesting Xianrendong was
used in winter and Diaotonghuan in summer.
For living, Xianrendong offered: 1. sufficient size; 2. nearby water with access to rivers and
lakes; 3. plenty of nearby food resources; 4. suitable climate and rainfall; and 5. wild rice.
Wild rice must occur for domestication1 in a cultivated rice region. Its perennial form is in
Jiangxi’s Dongxiang County, where locals call it ghost rice, grandpa rice, mountain rice, holy
rice, wild rice and pheasant rice. Likely growing beside the creek, this bog rice had abundant
tillers and roots, with strong frost and insect resistance, slow leaf deterioration and wide soil
compatibility (5). Noting its easy cultivation, its domestication became inevitable for local people,
starting with casual transplanting to a newly silted riverbank and later selection of plants with the
most grain. Centuries of repetition enforced human habits, resulting in rice domestication.
Archaeological Proof
i) What is Xianrendong’s situation, considering rice origin research needs proof?
Two Xianrendong excavations in the 1960’s yielded 90 stone, bone and mollusk tools and
pots, 10,000 mammal and bird bones, human bones of 5 individuals and 20 ash pits dating about
9000 years ago (6).
Recently, American archaeologist MacNeish and Chinese professors Wenhua Chen and
Shifan Peng extended the sampling, and also excavated Diaotonghuan, finding a 9-14,000 yearold Early Neolithic level above a 15-20,000 year-old Late Paleolithic level, with a bottom
stratum unexcavated.
ii) Phytolith and pollen background
Zhijun Zhao says bigger pollen grains in the two upper formations resemble paddy rice; the
lower formation phytoliths resemble wild rice (7). “Male flower pollen forms from inner and outer
wall cells, the nutrient nucleus and reproductive cells, while the firm outer wall forms various
identifiable patterns (8) of holes, grooves, appendages and pollen ducts, the phytoliths of which
may last a million years" (9).
1
Ed. note. BCG. As geneticists show that indica and japonica differentiated from common wild rice much earlier in the Himalayan foothills, the
above should read ‘wild japonica genome”, not the implied common wild rice or CWR.
2
Japan's Yo-Ichiro Sato says phytolith components in rice plant motor or bulliform cells
differ in shape and do not change for millennia, their analysis in the soil leadng to identification
of the paddy rice variety (10).
The Chinese Academy of Science, Genetic Institute’s Fan Li says "Jiangxi’s Xianrendong
site has 14,000 year-old paddy rice phytoliths" (11).
The USA’s MacNeish says "11,600-9600 year-old phytoliths at the Early Neolithic
Xianrendong site show people were domesticating rough rice" (12).
The USA’s Jane Libby says “Hunan’s Dr. Zhijun Zhao says our phytolith research shows
people used wild rice more than 20,000 years ago" (13).
Although rice grain was absent, the above is proof of domesticated Xianrendong paddy rice
perhaps before the Early Neolithic because husk-tempered pottery is absent.
iii) Early Xianrendong people along the creek expanded to the Bo River, creating 22 early
agricultural sites along Boyang Lake(14), the most noteworthy being Shijiaqiao County’s (Shi
Family Bridge) Hukou Lake Entrance 100 km from the Bo River and a possible tie to
Xianrendong. With no planned excavation, its agricultural tools and style are Early Middle
Neolithic(15) and I was able to sample 2-3 cm thick sand-tempered sherds with surface pasted
inner and outer walls.
Rice domestication by south-migrating Bo people
7
i) The Bo expanded along Boyang Lake:
They came from northwest Lu (Shandong Province), north of Bo Mountain. Today’s Zibo
City was once Panyang, with Pan River to the south. Pan and Bo have the same handshaped,
seed-sowing radical in ancient pictograms (16). After Bo (Pan) millet agriculturalists were forced
south by broad-axe-armed Pangu clan warriors from Jinan’s Ji River, they crossed Anhui
Province 40,000 years ago2 to Xianrendong.
A small basin with water resources on a long rolling knoll might have had edible plant
stems, leaves and fruit; the brook and pond may have had aquatic resources like fish, shrimp,
mussels and clams, year-round water caltrop and lotus root, plus birds and mammals (water
buffalo?) in the nearby hills. Under living conditions and a climate superior (winter high 5-10 C)
to northern Lu, the Bo settled, naming the place after themselves. The small hill behind
Xianrendong is called Bo Mountain, its creek leading to the Bo and Big Bo Rivers and then the
great Boyang Lake, with Boyang hamlet on the high ground north of Bo River.
ii) Bo grass seed staples
As northern cultivators they knew millet needs open flat fields, whereas Xianrendong is in
a wet valley with wild rice. Rice grain drops readily and is easy to process, while millet shedding
is difficult and its unhusked seed difficult to swallow, so wild husked rice became a staple. A
rising population needed more rice, so they cultivated wild rice under plentiful spring and
2
Ed. note BCG. From mythology
3
summer rain in the small 1000-2000 acre (Chinese) basin. As 100-200 acres could feed dozens to
hundreds, clan protection against invaders may have formed, with the Xianrendong area the Bo
center.
iii) Agricultural land management
Chiyu Yang said the character for Bo includes paddy mud mashing and mixing by water
buffalo(17). As they are the same color as the li plow, and its domesticator was the Bo, the people
and buffalo were combined as Boli, later Pengli, which indicates north Jiangxi, according to the
Yugong chapter in Classic Literature. Thus, 14-20,000 years ago, Boyang Lake area became the
origin of domesticated rice and Jiangnan its first paddy rice area.
iv) Hut construction:
On the plain beside the lake and paddy field people lived together in small round centerposted huts with rush, branch and rice straw roofs atop walls plastered with straw and husktempered clay (later fired like pottery)” (18).
v) Ba culture origin:
While domesticating rice, the Bo married locals, using their males as laborers and guards.
Being more advanced, they were leaders (Bo means father on the middle and lower Yangtze
River). The Bo sound later shifted to Ba, the clan leader known as Bawang (Ba King). Ba culture
was represented by the Ba overlord of the Chu Kingdom before the Han Dynasty and, for a brief
period, full ruler of China.
vi) Rice planting technology first passed to Dongting Lake:
The central plain’s Pangu clan arrived northwest of Dongting Lake and the east side of the
Wuling Mountains 40-50,000 years ago (19). With conditions very different than Xianrendong,
cultivation was unnecessary for Pangu hunter-gatherers. They also lived at Taohua or Dongting,
later cooperating with the Boli clan to expand their planting. The Neolithic clan system with
private ownership grew under the stable Dongting setting, expanding to rice agriculture in a large
northwest highland area, where the 9000 year-old Pengtoushan site was the main site (20). Paddy
rice agriculture expanded up to the time of Zaoshi’s lower level, and Daxi, Qujialing and
Shijiahe cultures” (21).
The search for paddy rice origin must be practical, widespread and proven, but
archaeological finds are not absolute. As Anping Pei says, “More than once, people adhering to
this absolute fall into the predicament of ignoring new finds that provide new ways of
thinking”(22). This is because paddy rice origin requires: (1) suitable climate and rainfall; (2) good
accommodation like a cavern; (3) enough water for drinking and paddy rice cultivation; (4)
enough natural food resources; (5) wild rice; (6) domesticated rice remains; and (7) humans
capable of domesticating rice. If North China is the only origin of civilization, then South
China’s Xianrendong may be the sole paddy rice origin, but could another place have the same
conditions? None currently are known.
(2) WHAT ABOUT YUCHANYAN AND JIA LAKE SITES?
4
Although Yuchanyan has the oldest fossil rice grain, other things are missing, so we cannot
consider it as a paddy rice origin. Below are other opinions:
Zhijun Zhao says:
“Yuchanyan is in a humid area in low latitude subtropics, so it was impossible to develop
early paddy rice agriculture due to its location and ecology” (23).
Anping Pei says:
“Yuchanyan rice is long like wild rice and wider, while Bashidang rice approaches
japonica in length and wild rice in width. These important differences “mean paddy rice from the
middle Yangtze River and South China do not have the same origin” (24).
Xiangkun Wang says:
“Yuchanyan rough rice does not resemble primitive cultivated rice”(25). Yuchanyan’s
developed Neolithic tools and pottery did not appear suddenly, but where did they come from?
Wuyang County’s 8500 year-old Jia Lake Middle Neolithic rough rice, foundations,
cellars, graves and kiln are found with several thousand artifacts of different material in nearly
100 places, including a 7-note bone flute and engraved full-grown turtle carapace(26) that did not
originate in Pengtoushan. Jia Lake site was possibly at a higher stage(27), but its hazy background
prevents consideration as a domesticated rice origin.
The condition of other sites is such that they could not be rice origins.
(3) CAN WE SAY XIANRENDONG IS CHINA’S SOLE ORIGIN OF
DOMESTICATED RICE?
I believe so, as conditions elsewhere were unsatisfactory, including the lower Huai River,
but the latter is worth further examination because it may be another paddy rice origin, my
reasons being:
(1) I mentioned the 20-30,000 year-old lower Huai River(28) Tianhuang (Emperor of
Heaven) paddy rice culture,3 an important source of Yellow River civilization. “As sea level fell
greatly in the last 15,000-18,000 years, mainly 15,000 years ago when it was lowest (110 m
lower than now)” (29), most important Tianhuang remains are now submerged, but many are in
dry sites; for example, "Zhaoyang Valley was called Tianwu by god"(30) but is actually
Tianhuang. As the Zhaoyang area has much fine stoneware in the Yuntai Mountains, I think
surveys will be profitable: “a high eastern peak facing the sunny 200 li round valley below
Yuntai Mountain has different grasses and fresh flowers”(31), with possible ties to Shuiliandong.4
(2) The lower Huai River culture of the Erjian and Longqiuzhuang (Young Dragon Village)
sites differ greatly from Shandong and Jiangnan cultures. That the Eastern Yangtze-Huai, plus
Shandong’s Late Li and Beixin cultures also differ, with no ties to Hemudu and Majiabang
culture(32), show the lower Huai River culture rose independently.
3
4
Ed. note BCG. This too is fanciful.
A mysterious legendary place in popular folklore
5
The Jiangsu Institute of Agricultural Sciences Grain Research Institute says the
Lianyungang area is possibly a paddy rice origin, as does Japan's Yo-Ichiro Sato (33).
Yunfeng Xu believes “paddy rice being tropical, japonica and indica differentiation may
have resulted from glacial and volcanic activity in the Tai Lake-Yuntai Mountain-Binhai Ice
Age, affecting plant not seed variation. The Tai Lake-Yuntai Mountain area has the most
potential as a paddy rice origin” (34).
(3) Two important Tianhuang cultural items must be considered:
a. Jiangjun Cliff painting which I think is more than 20,000 years old, perhaps China’s first
painting (35) and where offerings were made to Tianhuang (Emperor of Heaven); and
b. a Dawenkou culture pot painted with a sun above many tall peaks, likely the Tianhuang
clan’s Kunlun Mountain insignia, which is sophisticated art like Jiangjun Cliff (36).
(4) I believe Jia Lake culture ascended the Huai River. Wuyang5 (Dancing Sun or Wu
People’s Sun) and their bone flutes are symbolic proofs of their love of related dance and music.
Their sophisticated writing could only have come via Tianhuang culture. Yunfeng Xu says Jia
Lake paddy rice was introduced by lower Huai River immigrants, while some Jia Lake tools
resemble those of early Dawenkou culture (Agricultural Archaeology 1994(3):68). 37
(5) Yuchanyan people likely relate to these immigrants, who moved south from the upper
Huai River to Dongting Lake, then along the Xiang and Xiao Rivers south to Yuchanyan. Da
was a clan name in Tianhuang culture and Dao and Da County are the same. The immigrants
could also have gone west along the Yellow River to the Kunlun Mountains and then south to
Yuchanyan.
(6) Finally, Cailin Wang says Longqiuzhuang’s “7000 year-old paddy rice agriculture was
imported”38, possibly from Tianhuang culture.
In brief, lower Huai River archaeology is worth exploring.
(4) LOWER HUAI RIVER PADDY RICE ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROPOSAL:
A lower Huai River paddy rice origin approaches Xianrendong’s in credibility, but its
archaeological data are few and shallow:
(1) the earliest Erjian site is only 8000 years old, so we must find older sites with cultural
remains comparable to those at Yuchanyan and Jia Lake.
(2) the Jiangjun Cliff painted clan emblem cannot prove paddy rice agriculture, but
suggests a food surplus and leisure time.
(3) general fieldwork must focus on Chaoyang Valley and Donglei, and it is very important
to find Shuiliandong because it may relate to Donglei).6
5
Wu in Wuyang means dance and is pronounced identically as the family name because the Wu love dancing and music. Later, the Kingdom of
Wu grew in the Warring States period.
6
Ed. note BCG; see also Cailin Wang, Tetsuro Udatsu, Linghua Tang, Jiangshi Zhou, Yunfei Zheng, Akira Sasaki, Kazuo Yanagisawa and
Hiroshi Fujiwara (1998).
6
If these contribute to paddy rice origin, then lower Huai River paddy rice origin is older
than Xianrendong or is another Chinese paddy rice origin. (Written 1997/11/7)
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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7
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(35) (36) and (28).
(37) and (34)7.
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