The birth of rice

摘要

Asian civilization was built on rice -on Oryza sativa, to be exact. The crop, which today is the primary food source for half of the worlds population, transformed nomadic hunter-gatherers into stay-at-home farmers, spawned the first urban centres and built empires and dynasties. "Probably more so than any crop, it drove societies and economies to become densely populated, potentially more urbanized, and it also transformed landscapes," says Dorian Fuller, an archaeobotanist at University College London.