ABSTRACT
The question of whether rice was domesticated only once and in one particular area or simultaneously in several regions remote from one another has been a point of long and lively discussion. Some botanists believe that rice was originally domesticated in one narrow region and afterwards introduced to other areas in the course of later migrations (Watabe 1985). Barrau (1974: 31), for example, suggested that rice was brought to Southeast Asia by migrants from the north who were already cereal cultivators. Other scholars (Yen 1982; Chang 1989; etc.) adopt a polycentric approach, proposing that rice was domesticated in different parts of a vast region including South China, East India and Southeast Asia. The same two approaches are also popular among archaeologists and prehistorians. Chesnov (1973, 1976) and Sorensen (1972, 1986) believe that rice cultivation spread from a particular area of South China, while others (Bayard 1975; Glover 1979, 1985; Bellwood 1985) support a polycentric view (see also Shnirelman 1989).
