ibclogo XVI International Botanical Congess


Abstract Number: 5733
Session = 15.17.5


THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND PALEOECOLOGICAL CONTEXTS OF EARLY RICE DOMESTICATION IN THE MIDDLE YANGTZE REGION, CHINA


Zhijun Zhao and Quinhua Jiang, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Unit 0948, APO AA 34002-0948


The beginnings of plant domestication, one of the most fundamental changes in human history, appeared almost simultaneously in different parts of the world some 10,000 years ago. The global climatic changes during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition have been widely thought to be triggering effect on this event. Archaeological evidence indicates that the domestication of rice, Oryza sativa L., occurred in the middle Yangtze region, China, at 10,000 years before the present. The purpose of this study is to define the environmental changes that occurred across the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in the middle Yangtze region. Two sedimentary cores from Boyang Lake and Dongting Lake have been studied through pollen and phytolith analysis. The results indicate that the Pleistocene/Holocene transition in the region was marked by fluctuations between northern subtropical and southern subtropical vegetational formations caused by significant climatic changes. Such conditions altered resource availability and density and appeared to have triggered the domestication of rice.


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