Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China. E. N. Anderson
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a woman’s job then as now in that area. She benefited humanity more, I believe, than all the kings and generals of history.
This (slightly fictionalized) event produced bread wheat. It is nicknamed “BAD wheat” by geneticists because the genomes are respectively labeled A for the female ancestor (T. urartu), and B and D for the successive Aegilops inputs. A possible separate hybridization of the same species produced spelt, which makes better porridge but worse bread. This was not the end—other wheats have been developed but they are local and need not detain us here.
Many other domesticates come from the Fertile Crescent, and much activity seems to center on the aforementioned Karachadag, where chickpeas are native and where some strains of barley may have originated. The oldest known cultivation so far, however, is in Syria and Jordan, where agriculture goes back to 9500 BCE or earlier.
Dogs were domesticated about the same time, or even earlier (recent claims have them going back to 30,000 years ago). They were presumably the earliest domesticated animal, but we know surprisingly little about their origin. They first show up in ritual burials (touchingly including children buried with puppies) from the earliest agricultural levels. Sheep and goats were domesticated not long after, and somewhat later came cattle and pigs. Cattle certainly, and pigs almost certainly, were independently domesticated in several different places. We know this for cattle because the domesticate strains are radically different forms. The Indian zebu is not even the same species as the Near Eastern cow, and hybridizing them was a modern scientific triumph. The traditional East Africa cow (the Ankole) is different from both.
Contrary to older ideas of progress, stockherding came well after farming, not before. The ancient Greeks thought herding was lower on the human scale than farming and so must have come earlier. They saddled history with this latter illusion, dispelled only by modern archaeology. Snobbism never makes good theory.
This is not the place to get deeply into theories of agriculture, but suffice it to say that all the classic theories are wrong. Most of them depend on the idea that people were primitive savages who wandered around at the mercy of nature until some genius noticed that seeds grew into plants. Of course, everyone has known the latter for hundreds of thousands of years. Agriculture was about choosing to sow, not about learning that seeds grew into plants. Other theorists assume people invented agriculture because they “needed food,” but Carl Sauer (1952) proved long ago that people would have to be settled, knowledgeable, and aware of diverse and rich resources before they took up farming. Desperate people don’t have time to invent. As the Chinese proverb says: “When you are thirsty, it’s too late to dig a well.”
The really revolutionary new finds are recent discoveries of large settlements just before agriculture began. The huge ceremonial site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is only 60 km from the Karachadag (Mann 2011 provides stunning photos). In Jordan, a large, well-to-do, architecturally sophisticated village with a huge and beautiful assembly hall arose just before agriculture began (Mithen et al. 2011; this is the same Steven Mithen who delightfully holds that humans sang or at least chanted before they talked [Mithen 2006], an idea originally stemming from Giambattista Vico [1999, orig. ca. 1740]. I love the idea, but alas it is unprovable.) The villagers were eating well from game and wild plants. Clearly, settled, well-fed life preceded agriculture.
Therefore, fairly recently, some scholars have argued that agriculture was invented not to prevent starvation but to allow people to have a large supply of favorite foods at hand for convenience, defense, and trade. Perhaps, in light of the striking architecture in Göbekli Tepe and Jordan, ceremonies required copious supplies (Hayden 2001; Mann 2011). I would bet on trade as the major driver. It provides an incentive to have lots of food close to the village to be ready at hand and also protected from raids.
Very soon after the domestication of wheat and barley, chickpeas, lentils, and other legume crops were domesticated in the Near East. Beans were early in China, Mexico, Peru, and other ancient centers of farming, also. Their easily available protein makes them desirable crops to go along with the grains, which provide bulk calories and B vitamins but not enough protein for an easy living. The other great source of protein, animal husbandry, soon followed, with sheep and goats in the Near East, pigs and chickens in China. Then, not much later, or perhaps even earlier, came vegetables and herbs; they do not preserve well archaeologically, so we know less about them. Among the fascinating mysteries of science are the origin points of our common fruit trees. The peach and mei are native to China, probably the northwest and center, respectively. The apricot can only be localized to Central Asia somewhere. The walnut, hazelnut, almond, quince, domestic grape, and several other species center on the Caucasus and the mountains of eastern Turkey and northern Iran and could have been domesticated anywhere in that region (or near it). The pistachio is native to the mountains of Iran and neighboring countries. Various species of pears and cherries were domesticated in both West and East Asia. One rare case of actual localization is the apple: genetics has pinpointed the domestic apple to the mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan, significantly close to the city of Alma Ata, whose name means “father of apples” (or “apple camp”).
Humans worldwide tend to domesticate the same kinds of fruit trees and other plants and animals. Different but closely related species of cherries were independently domesticated in Turkey, China, and Mexico thousands of years ago. Plums, chestnuts, and several other fruit and nut trees show similar patterns. The domestication of the mallard duck in the Old World (probably China) is paralleled by the domestication of the muscovy duck in South America. Pigs were, according to at least one genetic study, independently domesticated several times. And so it goes—through grains, squashes, and many other groups of plants.
CHAPTER 2
China’s Early Agriculture
The Dawn of Domesticated Grain
In China, at the same time, men and women were domesticating rice and millets, developing the first farming systems, and probably experimenting with other early farming activities. Soon afterward, in the Americas, men and women domesticated maize, potatoes, chiles, llamas…. The list goes on.
In the early and hopeful days of Chinese communism, Mao Zedong and his henchmen paid some lip service to “the Chinese people” and their “creativity.” However little they may have meant it—Mao’s own real hero was Qin Shi Huang Di, of whom more anon—it did make some people think, for a while. Alas, history and anthropology have returned to their more usual role of remembering only the famous names. Recent history books rehearse the old Imperial litany of hapless monarchs captive to their eunuchs and merciless generals decimating provinces. This is a pity. The ordinary people not only survived, but, year after year, dynasty after dynasty, fed the predatory elites. At best, this activity brought them peace, progress, and some prosperity. More often, it brought them more robbery and violence.
The great discoveries of history are those made by nameless farmers, craftspeople, cooks, and workers of every sort. Yet, also, from early times, China actually had government-sponsored agricultural experiments, manuals, extension services, and statistics. Unlike the West, it had an ideology favoring agriculture.
Archaeology, and a strikingly large amount of textual and documentary material, can now give us better images of ordinary life in old China. The present book cannot ignore elites, but I will attempt to move the balance a bit—to bring to consciousness the now silent millions who gave so much.
Early Farming in China
Immediately before agriculture, the people of what is now northern China were living on acorns, wild yams, wild grass seeds, and wild beans, as well as game and fish. The plants have been identified from starch grains on grinding stones (Liu 2012). Ropes, nets, and woven fabrics were presumably present; they are documented in nearby Russia from comparably early periods, up to 9,400–8,400 years ago (Kuzmin et al. 2012).
Agriculture began in two separate locations in China with two quite different crops. This might have been two different domestication events, or two local manifestations of an earlier, single event.