Article New radiocarbon and archaeobotanical evidence reveal the timing and route of southward dispersal of rice farming in south China Xiaoyan Yang a,b,⇑ , Qiuhe Chen a,c , Yongchao Ma d,⇑ , Zhao Li e , Hsiao-chun Hung f , Qianglu Zhang g , Zhiwei Jin h , Suoqiang Liu i , Zhenyu Zhou j , Xianguo Fu j a Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China b Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China c University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China d School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China e School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7HR, UK f Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia g Guangzhou Municipal Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics, Guangzhou 510627, China h School of Society & Anthropology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China i Guangdong Provincial Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics, Guangzhou 510075, China j Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100710, China article info Article history: Received 21 September 2018 Received in revised form 20 October 2018 Accepted 22 October 2018 Available online 31 October 2018 Keywords: Agriculture spread Charred rice seeds Phytolith analysis Nanshan Site Laoyuan Site Guangdong and Fujian abstract The origins and spreads of rice agriculture have been enduring topics, yet the timing and southward dis- persal from the Yangtze River Basin have been difficult to trace, due to the scarcity of archaeobotanical data, especially systematic macro-plant remains examination, combined with the poor preservation in the humid climate and acidic soils of China’s southern provinces. Here, we report new radiocarbon dating and preserved rice phytolith evidence, derived from three Late Neolithic archaeological sites in south China, dated about 5,000–4,100 cal a BP. Our results demonstrate that rice farming had spread southward through the mountainous regions of Wuyi and Nanling, then entered the areas of Western Fujian and North Guangdong by 5,000 cal a BP, followed by continued expansion into coastal areas of East China Sea and South China Sea, also crossing the Taiwan Strait, around 4,500–4,000 cal a BP. The North River, East River, Min River, and possibly other river systems likely were influential as pathways or conduits. Ó 2018 Science China Press. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science China Press. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The origins and spreads of rice agriculture have been studied for decades [1–6]. Compared with the two well documented expan- sion waves of rice resource utilization in northern China [7–10], its southward-spreading route has remained unclear. Although the possibility of native rice cultivation still cannot be rejected [11–14], increasingly mounting evidence supports the impression that rice-farming immigrants created significant cultural influ- ences throughout South China, indicating a southward flow of rice farming from the Yangtze River Basin and further connections southward with the Austronesian and Austroasiatic language- speaking populations of Southeast Asia [15–19]. Cross-regional studies have depicted the geographic spread of Austronesian-speaking populations and southward dispersal of traits such as pottery traditions, tool technologies, and language, departing from southern subtropical China around 5,000 years ago, then spreading incrementally across the Asia-Pacific region into parts of Pacific Oceania by 3000 years BP [20,21]. This cross- regional view so far has been missing direct evidence of rice farm- ing in most of the region and sub-areas of the picture, although fair amounts of rice remains have been found in sites of Jiangxi, Guang- dong, Fujian, and Taiwan (Fig. 1) [22–26]. More recently, archaeo- logical research in Guangdong and Fujian provided new evidence about the timing and routes of rice farming expansion into South and Southeast China [27–29], but the findings still could be strengthened and clarified. In order to resolve the missing piece in the puzzle of the southward dispersal of rice, here we report new discoveries of radiocarbon dating and rice remains derived, from three Late Neolithic archaeological sites of approximately https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scib.2018.10.011 2095-9273/Ó 2018 Science China Press. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science China Press. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: xyang@itpcas.ac.cn (X. Yang), yongchao0226@126.com (Y. Ma). Science Bulletin 63 (2018) 1495–1501 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Science Bulletin journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scib