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Race for Early Rice
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Volume 56 Number 5, September/October 2003
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by Colleen P. Popson
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China lost some bragging rights at the recent World Archaeological Congress when a team from Korea's Chungbuk National University Museum announced that remains of rice grains collected from the Paleolithic site of Sorori in Chungbuk Province yielded a radiocarbon date of about 14,000 B.P. This challenges the generally accepted notion that domesticated rice originated in China around 12,000 years ago. Because DNA analysis shows that these early rice types are different from modern cultivated rice, the find offers an opportunity to investigate the evolution of one of the world's principal food sources.
© 2003 by the Archaeological Institute of America
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