Today, 11% of the world's arable land is planted
in rice. This staple
grain
provides half the diet for 1.6 billion people; an additional 400 million
people depend on the plant for at least 25% of their food. In fact, among
the world's major grain crops, rice is the only plant that is harvested
almost solely for human consumption.
Yet despite its world wide significance, we
know relatively little about how or where rice was first domesticated. It
was originally indigenous to the tropics. Rice is an annual grass that shares
many characteristics with wheat, barley, oats, and rye. The rice plant belongs
to the genus Oryza. Oryza contains two cultivated species, the Asian
Oryza sativa and the West African Oryza glaberrima.
Asia seems to have been the focus for early experimentation and cultivation
of O. sativa. Recent archaeological research in South China has found
that rice was already an important component of the diet by 6000 B.C. Large quantities
of rice stalks, grains, and husks were preserved at the waterlogged prehistoric
village of Ho-mu-tu, excavated between 1973 and 1978. The settlement contains
houses raised on wooden piles above a lakeshore. Both wild and domesticated
varieties have been identified at Ho-mu-tu, making this some of the earliest
domesticated rice in the world. Remains of bottle gourds, water chestnuts,
and sour jujubes were recovered, as were acorns and other nuts. The faunal assemblage
includes wild deer, elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and turtle, as well as
the domesticated water buffalo, dog, and pig. Cord-impressed pottery was
found at Ho-mu-tu.
Wheat and barley along with larger quantities of a locally domesticated grain (millet) and domesticated pigs have been found in early agricultural village sites in China. This has led many to believe that the idea of agriculture may have been taken from the Middle East rather than independently developed in China. However, information about the Chinese Neolithic has undergone a major transformation. Thousands of new Neolithic sites have been identified. Early Neolithic sites in North China with millet and pigs have now been dated to between 5,000 and 7,000 B.C. At south China sites, the staple food plant was rice, not millet. The origin of agriculture now appears to have been an indigenous process in North and South China. In China is appears that local cultigens are more abundant and earlier than imported domesticates such as wheat.
The best known Chinese Neolithic site is Ban-po-ts'un
(banpo; pronounced baan paw). It is not the oldest, but rather the easrliest
to have been excavated extensively
. Banpo covers five to seven hectares
(12.5 to 17.5 acres). Roughly 100 houses, both circular and square in shape,
were surrounded by a defensive drainage ditch. The occupation at Ban-po
was long and continuous. In one area, five superimposed house floors were
uncovered suggesting continuous remodeling and rebuilding.
Many of the houses were semisubterranean and
about 3 to 5 m (10 to16 ft) in diameter. Floors were typically about a meter
below the ground surface. Each house had timber beams that rested on stone
bases, supporting a steeply pitched thatched roof. Floors and interior walls
were plastered with clay and straw. One or two circular or pear-shaped fire
pits,
modeled in clay, were situated at the center of most of the dwellings. Storage
pits and animal pens were interspersed among the houses at the center of
the settlement.
At Banpo, the principal crop was millet which
was cultivated in the rich soils that surround the village. Such agricultural
tools as bone hoes, polished stone adzes, axes, knives, and digging-stick
weights were abundant at the site. Chestnuts, hazelnuts, and pinenuts supplemented
the grain diet. The inhabitants of Banpo grew hemp, probably for use as
a fiber. Silk production
is suggested by a neatly sliced silkworm cocoon that was recovered. Numerous
spindle whorls, for spinning thread, and bone needles also were found. 
Pigs and dogs were the principal domesticated animals, although cattle, sheep, and goats also were present. Bone and quartz arrow points, bone fishhooks, and net-sinkers all were found, along with plentiful bones of several varieties of deer. Thus hunting and fishing contributed to the diet at Ban- po.
Banpo has yielded more than 500,000 pieces of
pottery. Six pottery kilns were recovered beyond the ditch at the east side
of the settlement, outside the residential zone. Most of the vessels were
handmade into a distinctive red ware. While cooking pots tend to be coarse
and gritty, water 
vessels and foodserving bowls are made of a finer clay.
Cord-marking is the most common surface decoration, although basket, textile,
and finger-nail impressions are also used. The black-painted geomorphic
and zoomorphic Yangshao designs are also applied primarily to bowls and
jars.
The inhabitants of Banpo were buried two ways. Infants and small children were placed in large redware pottery jars and interred near the houses. A cemetery for adults was located outside the enclosing ditch at the north end of the settlement. Corpses were placed in pits two m (6.5 ft) deep in rows. Typically, each individual was buried individually in an extended position. Ceramic vessels were included with the body in most of the graves. The most elaborate burial was a child, who was placed in a wooden tomb that included a green jade pendant, a string of 63 bone disk beads, four ceramic vessels, and three stone pellets.
Toward the end of the occupation at Banpo, a large rectangular structure was erected on a manmade platform (20 by 12.5 m, or 65 by 41 ft) in the center of the village. The platform was ringed by a low wall that originally may have been the foundation for a wall of posts. This structure was plastered with a white limy substance that had been hardened by baking. The structure also had a hard earthen floor that appears to have been destroyed in a fire. Chinese archaeologists interpret the building as a communal assembly hall or clan house.
Scene of Banpo Village which is now open to the public for tours. The Chinese have an interpretive display that allows people to view the site and artifacts recovered from the excavation:
