Dating rice remains through phytolith carbon-14 study reveals domestication at the beginning of the Holocene
Edited by Dolores R. Piperno, Smithsonian Institution, Fairfax, VA, and approved April 19, 2017 (received for review March 16, 2017)
Significance
When the domestication of rice began in its homeland, China, is an enduring and important issue of debate for researchers from many different disciplines. Reliable chronological and robust identification criteria for rice domestication are keys to understanding the issue. Here, we first use phytolith dating to constrain the initial occupation of Shangshan, an important site with early rice remains located in the Lower Yangtze region of China. We then identify the rice phytoliths of Shangshan as partly domesticated based on their morphological characteristics. The results indicate that rice domestication may have begun at Shangshan in the Lower Yangtze during the beginning of the Holocene.
Abstract
Phytolith remains of rice (Oryza sativa L.) recovered from the Shangshan site in the Lower Yangtze of China have previously been recognized as the earliest examples of rice cultivation. However, because of the poor preservation of macroplant fossils, many radiocarbon dates were derived from undifferentiated organic materials in pottery sherds. These materials remain a source of debate because of potential contamination by old carbon. Direct dating of the rice remains might serve to clarify their age. Here, we first validate the reliability of phytolith dating in the study region through a comparison with dates obtained from other material from the same layer or context. Our phytolith data indicate that rice remains retrieved from early stages of the Shangshan and Hehuashan sites have ages of approximately 9,400 and 9,000 calibrated years before the present, respectively. The morphology of rice bulliform phytoliths indicates they are closer to modern domesticated species than to wild species, suggesting that rice domestication may have begun at Shangshan during the beginning of the Holocene.
Acknowledgments
We thank Prof. Dolores R. Piperno for her important suggestions, which subsequently improved this paper; Mr. Darden Hood and Ron Hatfield for their advice about phytolith dating; Prof. Chunxia Zhang and Ms. Bin Hu for their assistance with X-ray diffraction of the phytolith; Dr. Saihong Yang for her assistance with scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive spectrometer analysis; and Prof. Yunfei Zheng for providing several images of pottery sherds from Shangshan. This work was funded jointly by the 973 Program Grant 2015CB953801; the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants 41230104, 41401230, 41430103, and 41472154; and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation-funded project Grant 2014M561050.
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Cover image: Pictured is Lasioglossum albipes, from the bee family Halictidae. Certain species in the family are solitary, others live in social groups, and still others, such as L. albipes, can produce both social and solitary forms. Bernadette Wittwer et al. found that solitary halictid bees have fewer sensory receptors on their antennae than social halictid bees. According to the authors, the complexity of a species' sensory perception system may be linked to the evolution of social behavior. See the article by Bernadette Wittwer et al. on pages 6569–6574. Image courtesy of Sam Droege (United States Geological Survey, Reston, VA).
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Published online: May 30, 2017
Published in issue: June 20, 2017
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Acknowledgments
We thank Prof. Dolores R. Piperno for her important suggestions, which subsequently improved this paper; Mr. Darden Hood and Ron Hatfield for their advice about phytolith dating; Prof. Chunxia Zhang and Ms. Bin Hu for their assistance with X-ray diffraction of the phytolith; Dr. Saihong Yang for her assistance with scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive spectrometer analysis; and Prof. Yunfei Zheng for providing several images of pottery sherds from Shangshan. This work was funded jointly by the 973 Program Grant 2015CB953801; the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants 41230104, 41401230, 41430103, and 41472154; and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation-funded project Grant 2014M561050.
Notes
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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