ABSTRACT
It has been said that history is basically the search for origins. The very title of this book on the Rice: Origin, Antiquity, and History indeed ties history to the search for beginnings, namely the search for the origins of domesticated rice. The pioneering archaeobotanical research that took place during the last quarter of the preceding century for candidate sites for the earliest domestication of rice pointed exclusively to the middle and lower Yangtze region as early as 8000 years ago.1 A recent, closer and more critical look at these earlier findings by Londo et al.2 suggests that “cultivated rice was domesticated at least twice from different O. rufipogon populations and that the products of these two independent domestication events are the two major rice varieties, Oryza sativa indica and Oryza sativa japonica. Based on this geographical analysis, O. sativa indica was domesticated within a region south of the Himalaya mountain range, likely eastern India, Myanmar, and Thailand, whereas O. sativa japonica was domesticated from wild rice in southern China.” Sharma, Tripathy and Biswal3 assert “that rice might have been domesticated at many sites simultaneously.” Thus newer genetic findings have overturned the widely held presumption of a single origin for rice domestication in China. The lesson to be learned here is two-fold: pronouncements about origins require careful fieldwork and analysis; new analytical technologies such as the electron microscope, DNA studies, and GIS can be used effectively to come to less speculative and more scientifically based conclusions. In this paper, we champion the use of GIS technology.
