History of rice

Since it has been such an vital grain worldwide, the domestication and cultivation of rice is one of the most important events in history that has had the greatest impact on the most people. When and where the domestication of rice took place is not specifically known, but new archaeological evidence points to an area along the in central China and dates back as far as 11,000 years. Researched by a team of Japanese and Chinese archaeologists and presented at the 1996 International conference on Agriculture and Civilizations in Nara, Japan, of 125 samples of rice grains and husks, as well as of rice imitation in pottery, from sites located along a specific portion of the Yangtze generally indicate a median age of over 11,000 years. Another discovery of possibly the oldest settlement found in China, which is located closely upstream from the other sites, gives credence to the new answer. In any event, it wasn't until the development of paddling and transplanting of the rice plant that the spread of rice as an agricultural crop really began. skillful in the wetlands of China, the concept of the rice paddy was adopted by Southeast Asia in roughly 2000 B.C. farming techniques migrated to Indonesia around 1500 B.C. and then to Japan by 100 B.C. To the West, rice was also an early important crop in India and SriLanka, dating as far back as 2500 B.C. and 1000 B.C. respectively. The spread to Europe, Africa, and America occurred more slowly, first with the Moor's invasion of Spain in 700 A.D. and then later to the New World during the age of exploration and colonialism. Rice has been grown in the United States since the seventeenth century in such areas as the southeastern and southern states, as well as California.