The people take food as the sky, and eating is the top priority of the people's livelihood. In the eating habits formed by the Chinese people for thousands of years, the "five grains" represented by starchy foods have always been the absolute protagonists, and although there are thousands of types of production, the raw materials for making them are all "five grains". The five grains represent the cultivation wisdom of the Chinese ancestors, so how are the grains, dried fruits and vegetables on the table Chinese domesticated?
People take food as the sky, eating is the top priority of people's livelihood, in the eating habits formed for thousands of years, the "five grains" represented by starchy foods have always been the absolute protagonists
The original meaning of "grain" refers to grain with shells, and there are dozens or hundreds of types subdivided into dozens or hundreds of species, but the ancestors divided them into five categories and passed down the name of "five grains". In China's thousands of years of agricultural civilization, the word "five grains" was first derived from the "Analects of Micro-Son": "The four bodies are not diligent, the five grains are not divided, which is the master?" There are many versions of "five grains", of which there are two most mainstream theories: one is the "hemp, millet, millet, wheat, and shu" recorded in the Zhou Li, and the other is the "rice, millet, millet, wheat, and millet" recorded in Mencius.
There are two most mainstream theories of grain: one is the "rice, millet, millet, wheat, and millet" recorded in Mencius.
Among them, millet is millet (i.e., yellow rice), millet is millet, scientific name is millet (i.e., millet), wheat is wheat, rice is rice, and millet refers to soybeans, and hemp is industrial hemp (the fiber raw material for spinning and weaving). This account coincides with the six crops found in archaeology, which are not only in the same number, but also in the same species. Therefore, the five grains are not legends, but historical facts, including five kinds of grains, rice, millet, soybeans and wheat, and a cash crop hemp.
Rice can be divided into indica and japonica rice, early and medium and late rice, glutinous rice and non-glutinous rice. The grains of rice are called rice or rice after the hull is removed.
According to archaeological findings, rice has been cultivated on the mainland for at least 7,000 years. There are two species of cultivated rice in the world, namely Asian rice and African rice.
Rice of five grains
Among the five cereals, rice belongs to the paddy field crops of the south and is the largest food crop in the world today, feeding nearly half of the world's population. At present, the academic community at home and abroad has recognized the view that rice originated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China, because Chinese archaeological discoveries provide sufficient evidence. For example, rice remains dating back 12,000 years have been found at the site of xianren cave and bucket ring in Wannian County, Jiangxi Province, and at the jade toad rock site in Dao county, Hunan Province.
The Shangshan Ruins, located in Huangzhai Town, Pujiang County, Zhejiang, are early Neolithic sites in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
Pieces of charcoal-coated pottery were found at the site of Shangshan, which contained traces of rice
Traces of rice at the Shangshan site provide inspiration for exploring the early Neolithic culture in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and beyond the wider geographical scope.
Later, the Shangshan site in Pujiang, Zhejiang Province, was excavated from the carbonized rice particles, the carbon-14 dating is 10,000 years ago, and a large number of rice husks were found in the excavated pottery pieces, which were mixed into the clay to make the pottery better. These archaeological excavations have proved that the domestication of rice and the cultivation of rice agriculture have appeared in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China around 10,000 years ago. Later, archaeologists have successively found seven or eight traces of rice remains and rice farming related to rice farming dating back 8,000 years. For example, the JiaHu site in Wuyang, Henan Province, not only unearthed the world's earliest and most complete preservation of wind instruments, but also hundreds of carbonized rice, diamond horns and lotus root fragments.
The ruins of Hemudu restore the scene of the life of the Hemudu people.
Ears of rice and carbonized rice excavated from the Hemudu site
Later, there are also excavations of the Yuyao Hemudu site and Tianluo Mountain site in Zhejiang Province 7,000 years ago, in addition to excavating a large amount of carbonized rice, but also found a lot of other evidence of ancient rice agriculture, such as rice fields, primitive agricultural tools and so on. This shows that by the time of the Hemudu culture 7,000 years ago, China's ancestors had begun to move from hunter-gatherer to rice farming society.
During the Hemudu culture 7,000 years ago, China's ancestors began to move from hunter-gatherer to rice farming society.
Millet of grains
While rice agriculture in the south is booming, millet and millet from dry farming in the north are also growing vigorously, as the core area of ancient Chinese civilization - the most important grain in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, they together with the Yellow River and the yellow land have bred a brilliant ancient Chinese civilization. At present, the earliest cultivated millet found by archaeology comes from the Donghulin site in Mentougou, Beijing, which dates from 9,000 to 10,000 years ago, which is also the earliest millet grain found in the world.
The most important discovery in the flotation results of the East Hulin site is the remains of millet and millet.
The Donghulin site is the earliest physical evidence of the grains of millet and millet found in formal archaeological excavations using scientific flotation methods.
In addition, more than 1,500 millets based on carbonized millet have also been excavated at the Xinglonggou site in Chifeng Ao Han Banner, Inner Mongolia, which is about 8,000 years old, 2,700 years earlier than the millet unearthed in Central Europe, as well as the Magnetic Mountain Ruins in Wu'an, Hebei, the Pei Ligang Ruins and Shawo Li Ruins in Xinzheng, Henan, the Yuezhuang Ruins in Jinan, Shandong, and the Dadiwan Ruins in Qin'an, Gansu Province, which are basically around 8,000 years old. After that, there is also the site of Yuhua Village in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, which dates back to 5500 to 7000 years, and tens of thousands of carbonized millet grains and millet grains have also been excavated.
The Magnetic Hill site is the first discovery of an early Neolithic cultural site in China, dating back to about 10,300 years ago, breaking through the age of Neolithic Yangshao culture archaeology
The chicken skeleton unearthed at the Magnetic Hill site is the earliest known domestic chicken skeleton found in China, more than 3,300 years before India, which was originally thought to be the world's earliest domestic chicken breeder.
In fact, the Yangshao culture period between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago was a period of rapid development of ancient culture in northern China, and more than 2,000 archaeological sites have been found in the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Yellow River, such as the Weishui River Basin, the Fenhe River Valley, and the Yiluo River Basin, and nearly 100 have been excavated. Most of these archaeological sites can be found from charred millet grains and millet grains as long as flotation is carried out. Compared with the rice remains preserved in the limestone caves in the south, it reflects the cultivation pattern of millet in the south and the north of China (see "Why did the millet millet planted in China for thousands of years be replaced by wheat imported from West Asia and withdraw from the ranks of staple grains?"). 》）。
Distribution map of agricultural archaeology (millet rice) sites in China
Soybeans were recognized by the world from the beginning as originating in China. The earliest cultivated soybean was unearthed at the Jia Lake site in Wuyang, Henan Province, 8,000 years ago.
Grain soybeans
The origin of soybeans is much more direct than rice, and it has been recognized worldwide from the beginning as originating in China. The earliest cultivated soybean was unearthed at the 8,000-year-old Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan Province, where the size and morphological characteristics of soybeans unearthed here are between wild soybeans and cultivated soybeans, reflecting that soybeans were being domesticated at that time. The shape of soybeans excavated from the Dongpan ruins in Linyi, Shandong, Nanwa in Dengfeng, Henan, and Chenzhuang in Zibo, Shandong, around 4,000 years ago, is not much different from today's soybeans.
The earliest cultivated soybeans were unearthed at the Jia Lake site in Wuyang, Henan Province, 8,000 years ago.
The size and morphological characteristics of soybeans excavated at the Jiahu site are between wild soybeans and cultivated soybeans.
Of course, it is also mentioned that soybeans were not used for oil extraction in ancient times, but were grain crops, and the ancient ancestors planted soybeans directly cooked and eaten, called "bean soup" or "bean paste". Therefore, history records that during the Warring States period, the Central Plains "ate the people's food, mostly bean rice and soup", that is, the people often used soybeans as rice and bean leaves as vegetables. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cao Zhi's well-known "Seven Steps Poem" said: "Boiled beans are held as soup, and wet seeds are used as juice." The beans burn under the kettle, and the beans cry in the kettle. "It can be seen that soybeans were a common food at that time.
Soybeans were not used for oil extraction in ancient times, but were grain crops, and the ancient ancestors planted soybeans directly cooked and eaten.
Wheat has appeared in the hieroglyph of "wheat" in the earliest oracle bones on the mainland, which means that wheat was common in the Yin Shang period 3200 years ago.
Wheat of five grains
As for wheat in the five food crops, it is very different from rice, millet and soybeans in the "five grains", and the origin of wheat is not in China but in West Asia. Wheat has appeared in the earliest oracle bones on the mainland, the hieroglyph of "wheat", which means that wheat was already a relatively common crop in the Yin Shang period 3200 years ago, but further back, you can only find the answer from archaeology: direct dating of wheat remains by accelerator mass spectrometry dating method.
Carbonized granules of wheat
The current annual representative of wheat remains excavated in China, the data quoted from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
At present, most of the wheat excavated in the northern Central Plains is within 4000 years, and only the lateral data of several sites in the Haidai area of Shandong Are about 4300 years ago. The earliest wheat remains were excavated in 2020 at the Site of Tongtiandong in Jimunai County, Xinjiang, and the side of the wheat remains reached 5200 years ago. These figures mean that wheat was transferred to China 5,000 years ago, and then to the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River around 4,000 years ago, and gradually became popular (see Why is wheat grown in China for more than 4,000 years considered to be native to Western Asia?"). Can't it be native domestication? 》）。
The first domesticated wild wheat was a grain of wheat, which had been domesticated in the mountains of present-day southeastern Turkey 10,600 years ago, showing a ripe ear of wheat.
The ploidy and distribution of various wheat species
Plants of the genus Wheat and Goat Grass eventually crossed to form common wheat, which was nurtured by the special climate of western Asia.
"Hu Fanyang" crops outside the grain
Of course, in addition to the five grains, there are also crops such as cherbarium that were domesticated by the Chinese ancestors, so the famous plant geographer en y Vavilov of the former Soviet Union believes that China is the earliest and largest center of origin in the world in his far-reaching theory of the eight origin centers of the world's crops, but the successful domestication of many crops is by no means completed by the Han people independently. In fact, in today's wide variety of grain fruits and vegetables, there are many crops introduced by "Hu Fan".
In his far-reaching theory of the eight origin centers of the world's crops, Vavilov believes that China is the earliest and largest center of origin in the world.
The successful domestication of many crops was by no means accomplished by the Han Chinese independently. In fact, in today's wide variety of grain fruits and vegetables, there are many crops introduced by "Hu Fan".
The so-called "Hu Fan", in the "Modern Chinese Dictionary", "Hu" has three meanings, one of which refers to the ancient northern and Western ethnic groups; The second refers to the (east-west) from the northern and western peoples; The third is used for surnames. And "Fan", first seen in the Western Zhou Dynasty's hieroglyphs, from Cai, Tian, is the addition of "Cai", the original meaning is the animal foot, extended to change, rotation or refer to the Western border peoples and foreign countries. In short, whether it is Hu or Fan, it can refer to foreign peoples or things.
Most of the foreign things named "Hu" were introduced by the Silk Road during the Western Han Dynasty to the Two Jin Dynasties, and their origins were concentrated in Central Asia and West Asia (especially Persia).
Schematic diagram of the Route of the Silk Road connecting the eastern and western ends of Eurasia
A rough count shows that foreign things in the name of "hu", such as huqin and hu flute are musical instruments, while pepper, flax (sesame), courgette (cucumber), walnut (walnut), coriander (broad bean), shallot (green onion), garlic (garlic), coriander (coriander), carrots, etc. are fruits and vegetables, and these things were introduced by the Silk Road during the Western Han Dynasty to the Two Jin Dynasties, and their origins were concentrated in Central Asia and West Asia (especially Persia).
Introduction of China's foreign crop origin distribution, data quoted from the surging news and Zhang Pingzhen's "Chinese Vegetable Name Interpretation".
The Qing Dynasty became the fastest population growth period in China's dynasties because of the introduction of high-yield crops such as sweet potatoes and corn.
The things named "fan", such as tomatoes (tomatoes), sweet potatoes (sweet potatoes), guava (bale, chicken poop fruit), papaya, melon (square melon, gourd), American papaya (square melon, gourd), American papaya (zucchini) and other crops, were mostly brought in by "tomatoes" in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and the origin was mostly Central and South America. In fact, in addition to "Hu" and "Fan", there are also "Foreign", such as foreign cars, foreign fires, etc., which are mostly imported from the late Qing Dynasty or even modern times, with diverse origins, mostly in Europe.
The Columbus Exchange was a sudden exchange of organisms, crops, races (slaves), cultures, infectious diseases, and even ideas between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
Compared with the "Hu" thing, the introduction of the "Fanyang" thing benefited from the geographical discovery of the Age of Navigation, the "Columbian Exchange" (the concept proposed by the American environmental historian Crosby), in just four or five hundred years, the New World and the Old World have changed the extensive and in-depth animal, plant, microorganism, economic and cultural exchanges, and the distribution of species throughout the world. This two-way exchange of species has introduced a large number of species native to Central and South America to China, and has also spread Chinese species to the Americas, such as "five grains and six animals".
Cited literature: "Characteristics of Agricultural Economic Development in the Formation Period of Chinese Civilization" - Zhao Zhijun, "Ancient Chinese Crop Species and Historical Evolution" - Zhou Yuezhong, "Agricultural Origins and the Evolution of Early Chinese Civilization", etc.
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