Declining oaks, increasing artistry, and cultivating rice: the environmental and social context of the emergence of farming in the Lower Yangtze Region

There is a growing body of evidence that reliance on rice cultivation emerged gradually in the Lower and Middle Yangtze river basin during the mid-Holocene amongst societies that had a heavy emphasis on the seasonal collecting and storage of acorns (Cyclobalanopsis, Lithocarpus and/or Quercus) and aquatic nuts (Trapa, Euryale). Recent archaeobotanical research, like that at Tianluoshan, provides evidence for the emergence of cultivation and the decrease in importance of gathered plant foods, and this paper situates these changes in relation to environmental, including climatically driven, changes especially in the Hangzhou Bay (Lower Yangtze) region. A growing number of pollen and other palaecological studies have become available in recent years, and here they will be reviewed to test the hypothesis that regional declines in nut-bearing trees (especially oaks, but also possibly Castanea/Castanopsis chestnuts) was one of the factors that favoured the increasing reliance on rice, which in turn drove the evolution, expansion and intensification of cultivation and the evolution of morphologically domesticated rice. Another factor, however, that also needs to be considered is the evidence for the emergence of social hierarchy and specialised craft production which may have concurrently pushed for an increasingly socially controlled and reliable staple food source in the form of rice. In this regard, it is important to note that intensification of rice use required increasing degrees of labour mobilisation, and landscape transformation, which could provide returns on labour investment to a degree that was not possible with oak groves. Current evidence indicates that both climate-driven environmental changes and social motivations correlate with the shift to domesticated rice and rice agriculture over the latter part of the Neolithic (6000–3000 BC). The earlier beginnings of rice cultivation, the first steps along this pathway, remain obscure although some earlier Holocene climatic events appear correlated.