Bulletin

Issue: May 2004

Research in Action

Rice, Buffalo, Water and the history of Chinese food production

A La Trobe University researcher is vying with other archaeologists to be first to pinpoint the timing of one of the great agricultural technical revolutions of all time. Science writer, Noel Carrick, reports.

When did the Chinese domesticate water buffaloes - or import domesticated animals from elsewhere - and harness them to ploughs to cultivate rice paddies?

The origin of the working water buffalo, which for hundreds of years has played a vital role in wet rice production in southern China and Southeast Asia, and the timing of its domestication, remains one of the great unknowns of Chinese history and archaeology. La Trobe University lecturer in Archaeology, Dr Li Liu, is one of a number of researchers attempting to unearth the answers.

According to Dr Liu, examination of different evidence from a range of sources raises more questions than answers. But at least her investigations in many parts of China have put to rest a number of false assumptions. Dr Liu has examined a range of buffalo bones of several species from dozens of archaeological sites in both north and south China, the remains of ancient bronze 'ploughs' and figurines, and ceramic models depicting agricultural scenes in a quest for the 'magic combination' that might shed light on the mystery.

The quest is to find the earliest archaeological site in which three prime ingredients - buffalo bones or other buffalo remains, evidence of ploughs, and the remains of rice or rice paddy - are all found together. No such site dating before the third or fourth century AD has been found. The fact that rice was first domesticated in China and that buffalo bones were found together with rice remains in Neolithic sites in China led archaeologists to theorise that the Chinese domesticated one or more of many native species of water buffalo sometime during the fifth millennium BC.

This is one of the theories Dr Liu has disproved. She believes that the native species were never domesticated and that the buffalo used in agriculture came from elsewhere - possibly imported via the south-western Silk Road. This was an alternate route starting from South China via India, Central Asia to the Middle East and the Roman world to the northern Silk Road which went from North China via central Asia.

No evidence of native buffalo has been found in China during late historic times, and the various species, now all extinct, were not related to the species still used in many areas to plough rice paddies.

The first evidence linking buffaloes, ploughs, and rice paddies occurs on a ceramic model found in a tomb in southern China dating from AD 286-321. Dr Liu believes this technology was most likely brought to South China by people who migrated from North China to escape political-economic turmoil at the time. The domestic buffalo used in rice paddies was probably the result of a technological transformation from cattle-ploughing in dry-land regions to buffalo-ploughing in wet-rice paddies.

She believes there is a possibility that rice cultivators may have used these beasts to trample rice fields in some regions in ancient China. This method still exists today in Southeast Asia. But it remains to be investigated when and where this technique was first used, and how it may have been related to the development of ploughing.•

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