What was the earliest crop cultivated by the Chinese people?

Rice and millet were the earliest crops cultivated by the Chinese people. According to current archaeological research, our country had already begun cultivating rice and millet as early as the early Neolithic period.

1. Millet

What we now call guzi, and after hulling is called xiaomi. It was developed from a wild foxtail grass. Millet has strong drought tolerance and a strong ability to self-propagate, and is one of the important crops of the loess region of the Yellow River basin. At Neolithic cultural sites such as Banpo in Xi'an, Jiangzhai in Lintong, and Beishouling in Baoji, Shaanxi, carbonized millet grains and millet husks have all been found. This shows that five or six thousand years ago millet was already widely cultivated in northern China.

2. Rice

Generally called rice, it was developed from wild rice through artificial cultivation. At the Hemudu cultural site dating back more than seven thousand years, a mixed accumulation of rice grains, rice husks, rice stalks, and rice leaves was found, with an average thickness of about forty to fifty cm. This is the earliest cultivated rice in the world to date. At Neolithic cultural sites in the Jianghuai and Jianghan regions, around Taihu and Dianchi Lake in Yunnan, and in Jianmen, Haimen, and other places in Guangdong, grains of indica rice and japonica rice have all been found. This shows that the primitive inhabitants of the Yangtze River basin and areas to the south in China at that time had already mastered rice cultivation techniques, and that China is one of the earliest regions in the world to cultivate rice.