CURRENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ARCHAEOBOTANICAL discoveries indicate that foxtail millet (Setaria sativa) was domesticated from its wild progenitorgreen foxtail (Setaria viridis)-in the loess area of the Yellow River Valley by at least 8000 years ago. Recent genetic studies also seem to support this hypothesis (e.g., Benabdelmouna et al. 2001; d'Ennequin et al. 2000; Nakayama et al. 1999), although some geneticists argue that there might have been more than one center of indigenous domestication (Schontz and Rether 1999). Millet farming had expanded to a vast area from the middle to the lower Yellow River Valley by 7000 years B.P. (Lu 1999). Many archaeological assemblages with foxtail millet remains have been found in the Yellow and the Yangzi River valleys and Tibet, with the Yellow River Valley being the core area (Table 1). Based on the cultivation of foxtail and broomcorn millets, Chinese civilization emerged at approximately 5000 B.P. However, many questions remain with respect to the origin of millet farming in the Yellow River Valley. The progress and remaining problems on this issue, as well as scholars who have been working on the topic, have been summarized elsewhere (Lu 1999, 2001). Briefly, the questions of where, when, how, by whom, and why foxtail millet was domesticated by 8000 years ago still remain. The domestication process is not clear, nor is it known what tools and cultivation methods were used in the initial domestication of this plant. To date, research on the origin of millet farming in the Yellow River Valley is primarily based upon archaeological and archaeobotanical data, which, unfortunately, are very limited for the period prior to 8000 years ago. Therefore, the initial phase of millet farming in the Yellow River Valley has not been archaeologically recognized. Apart from an observation of the botanical characteristics of green foxtail (Setaria viridis) and a harvesting experiment on this grass in 1996 (Lu 1998), no other observations or experiments had been carried out on this topic in mainland China prior to this experiment in 1999.

This paper examines the progress and remaining problems on the occurrence of cereal cultivation in China, which led to agriculture, and discusses some related theoretical issues. Based on currently available data, it is argued that the occurrence of cereal cultivation in China was associated with and related to the climatic and environmental changes after the last glacial epoch, the occurrence of new technology, including the manufacturing of pottery, and the adoption of a broad-spectrum subsistence strategy, whereas sedentism does not seem to be a prerequisite for this cultural change. The transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture in China seems to have been a gradual process, and foraging remained a subsistence strategy of the early farmers. The occurrence of cereal cultivation in China differed from that in other core areas, demonstrating the diversity of human cultures and contributing to our understanding of the origin and development of agriculture in the world.

Domesticated rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the five major crops in the world and a staple food for more than 30% of the world population. Yet the question of where, when, why and how the domestication of rice originated has been, and still is, a question under debate. However, as more archaeological and archaeobotanic discoveries have recently come to light, the question of the origin of rice cultivation now seems less elusive than it was a few decades ago. To date, both archaeological and archaeobotanic discoveries seem to indicate that rice cultivation first began in the middle Yangzi Valley by 8500–8000 years BP, and subsequently expanded to south China and Southeast Asia.

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Green foxtail (Setaria viridis) is an annual grass widely distributed over the Old World, including China, where evidence of the earliest foxtail millet domestication to date has been discovered in the Cishan assemblage, Hebei province, dated to approximately 7900–7500 BP (Institute of Archaeology CASS 1991). Isozymic analysis and interspecific cross between S. viridis and S. italica (domesticated foxtail millet) demonstrated that S. viridis is the progenitor of domesticated foxtail millet (Gao & Chen 1988; Li et al. 1945). Yet little is known about the process of millet domestication, and even less about either the botanical characteristics of S. viridis or its cultural significance regarding human domestication.