News •
A “three fields in two years” rotation system for wheat and millet was being practiced by the 6th century ce. Revolutionary changes in land utilization, however, started with the introduction in Fujian province of an early-maturing and relatively drought-resistant rice from Champa, a kingdom in what is now Vietnam. In 1012, when there was a drought in the lower Yangtze and Huai River regions, 30,000 bushels of Champa seeds were distributed. Usually a summer crop, the native rice plant of these locales required 150 days to mature after transplanting. Not only did this make a second crop difficult, but, because of the plant’s soil and water requirements, cultivation was confined largely to the deltas, basins, and valleys of the Yangtze. The imported Champa rice, on the other hand, ripened in just 100 days after transplanting and required less water.
The success of Champa rice initiated the development and dissemination of many more varieties suited to local peculiarities of soil, temperature, and crop rotation. The first new early-ripening strain to develop required 60 days after transplantation. By the 18th century a 50-day Champa and a 40-day Champa had been developed. In 1834 a 30-day variety was available—probably the quickest-ripening rice ever recorded. The effect was revolutionary. By the 13th century, much of the hilly land of the lower Yangtze region and Fujian had been turned into terraced paddies. At the close of the 16th century, Champa rice had made double, and sometimes triple, crops of rice common.
A second revolution in land utilization began in the 16th century, with the adoption of food crops from the Americas, such as corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and peanuts (groundnuts). These could be grown at drier altitudes and in sandy loams too light for rice and other indigenous cereals. Virgin heights in the Yangtze region and northern China were turned into corn and sweet-potato farms. As the population in the mountain districts increased, the potato took over the soils too poor for those crops. By the middle of the 19th century, even ravines and remote mountains were being cultivated. Similarly, the cultivation of peanuts penetrated the remote and agriculturally backward areas of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan provinces and the sandbars of Sichuan. Gradually, they brought about a revolution in the utilization of sandy soils along the lower Yangtze, the lower Huang He, the southeast coast, particularly Fujian and Guangdong, and numerous inland rivers and streams.
Even so, the revolution in land use failed to alter the basic human-land relationship in China. In the 18th century the Qianlong emperor rejected renewed demands for limitation of land ownership. In an edict (1740), however, he noted that “the population is constantly increasing, while the land does not become any more extensive.” He directed his subjects, therefore, to cultivate all and every odd piece of soil,
on top of the mountains or at the corners of the land. All these soils are suitable either for rice or for miscellaneous crops….No matter how little return the people may receive from cultivation of these lands, it will be always helpful in supplying food provisions for the people.
Korea
Between at least 8000 and 4000 bp the Chulmun culture flourished in the Korean peninsula. Chulmun people lived in pit-house villages and made pottery that was undecorated or decorated with linear designs. Their economy seems to have been based largely on hunting, gathering, and fishing. Foxtail millet and broomcorn millet directly dated to 5500 bp were discovered at the Tongsamdong site, near Pusan in southern South Korea. By 4000 bp rice appears to have been introduced from China.
Despite the initial adoption of crop production by Chulmun peoples, intensive agriculture did not develop in Korea until the beginning of the Bronze Age Mumun period, between 3500 and 3000 bp, when significant socioeconomic changes spread throughout the peninsula. Rice was more extensively grown during the Mumun period, and bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), soybean, adzuki (red) bean, and hemp were also grown. The original sources for soybeans and adzuki beans are still unclear, although early Chinese records mention that soybeans were a gift from the region encompassing the Northeast Plain (formerly Manchuria) and Korea. Korean soybeans dating to about 3000 bp are the oldest yet discovered. Mumun ridged dry fields and paddy fields have been excavated in the southern Korean peninsula.
Japan
In Japan, archaeologists have established a long unbroken sequence of cultures that spans the period from more than 30,000 years ago to the present. Villages were established throughout the Japanese archipelago between 13,000 and 11,000 bp. The oldest pottery in the world is found in Japan, China, and eastern Siberia and is associated with radiocarbon dates of about 13,800–13,000 bp. Extensive settlements in East Asia appear first in Japan at the beginning of the Jōmon period; the Uenohara site, in Kyushu, an Initial Jōmon pit-house community, dates to 11,000–8000 bp.
The early Jōmon were managing various plant resources and so are probably best described as food producers rather than strictly hunters and gatherers. Lacquer production was under way in northern Japan by 9000 bp, suggesting the so-called varnish tree (Rhus verniciflua) was being managed. At sites such as Usujiri B and Hamanasuno, in southwestern Hokkaido, small wild grains were harvested, as were fleshy fruits and nuts; as a result of human activity, the productivity of fruit- and nut-bearing trees was especially high near Jōmon communities.
By 4000 bp seeds of wild barnyard grass increased in size and became indistinguishable from those of its domesticated descendant, barnyard millet, in southwestern Hokkaido sites; this indicates that the Jōmon domesticated at least one plant. By about the same time, they had developed an elaborate culture characterized by ornate pottery, an extensive stone tool kit, and probably social ranking. Population densities were within the range of what might be expected for agriculturalists, suggesting that these Japanese peoples were living lives similar to those led by early Chinese agriculturists a few millennia before. Chinese crops such as hemp, foxtail and broomcorn millets, and rice were in Japan by 3,000 years ago; at about the same time, earthworks associated with cemeteries began to become common in the north.
By 3000–2500 bp, social and technological changes seen at least 500 years earlier in Korea were reaching the southern Japanese archipelago. These included paddy agriculture, bronze, and iron; the transformation produced the Yayoi culture. The Yayoi are known for metallurgy, intensive agriculture, and more-centralized sociopolitical organization. The Itazuke site has evidence of well-engineered drainage systems that were used to maintain paddy fields, and ditches and earthworks served as defensive structures around this and other densely populated communities. Crops included rice, millet, wheat, barley, soybeans, adzuki beans, hops, bottle gourds, peaches, and persimmons.
The Yayoi transformation expanded toward the northeast, and by 2100 bp all but Hokkaido, the northernmost prefecture, was part of the Yayoi world. In the south the Yayoi culture moved mainly through migration, but in the north Jōmon people appear to have adopted aspects of Yayoi life, including intensive agriculture. Yayoi crops were not entirely new to northeastern Japan; the region’s oldest directly dated rice, foxtail millet, and broomcorn millet are from Final Jōmon contexts (2900 bp) at the Kazahari site in Aomori prefecture.
On the northern frontier, people experimented with paddy agriculture, but any success they met was short-lived, and dry-field production eventually became the system of choice. Rainfall-based agriculture likely included broadcast sowing and the use of wooden spades with iron bits. This form of agriculture continued into recent centuries in Hokkaido, where the Ainu people practiced a mixed economy of agriculture, hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild plant foods. Soil samples from the Sakushu-Kotoni River site in Sapporo dating to 1300–1100 bp contain the largest collection of cultigen remains yet recovered in Japan. By 1300 bp millet, beans, hemp, barley, wheat, and melons were grown in northern Honshu and Hokkaido. The small number of rice grains found at northern sites suggests that rice was not locally grown but imported.
The wheat grown in Japan until at least the 16th century had the smallest grains ever reported for wheat. Since grain size and plant size are correlated, this wheat plant was also short. Compact wheat is well adapted to regions that experience high winds and heavy rainfalls at harvest time, because the plants will not lodge (become broken by harsh weather). This wheat would have been useful in southern Japan, Korea, and southern China, all of which are monsoonal regions that are frequently exposed to typhoons at harvest time.
