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However, the timing and specific routes of dispersal of rice out of East Asia remain elusive, due in part to a dearth of data from early historical periods in West Asia. Archaeobotanists have elucidated much of the path towards initial domestication, dispersal, and intensification of cultivation. Rice’s global economic importance is perhaps all the more impressive considering that its westward spread through Eurasia began several millennia after wheat’s eastward diffusion from southwest Asia, the latter process spanning from roughly 6500 to 2500 BC (Zohary 1998). The intensification of rice cultivation, along with maize ( Zea mays) and wheat, fueled major demographic transition of the past ten millennia (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984 Bocquet-Appel 2011 Gowdy and Krall 2014 Omrak et al. By better understanding the adoption of this water-demanding crop in the arid regions of West Asia, we explore an important chapter in human adaptation and agricultural decision making.Īsian rice ( Oryza sativa) is currently the second most-consumed food crop by humans, after wheat ( Triticum aestivum), and a major global primary commodity (FAO 2020). Complementary historical, linguistic, and archaeobotanical data illustrate two separate and roughly contemporaneous routes of westward dispersal, one along the South Asian coast and the other through Silk Road trade. Rice was present in West Asia and Europe by the tail end of the first millennium BC, but did not become a significant crop in West Asia until the past few centuries. The human-mediated westward spread of rice proceeded gradually, while its social standing and culinary uses repeatedly changing over time and place.

We also integrate written sources, linguistic data, and ethnohistoric analogies, in order to better understand the adoption of rice outside its regions of origin. In this article, we discuss the piecemeal, but growing, archaeobotanical data for rice in West Asia.

However, the timing and routes of its dispersal into West Asia and Europe, through which rice eventually became an important ingredient in global cuisines, has remained less clear. Rice is one of the most culturally valued and widely grown crops in the world today, and extensive research over the past decade has clarified much of the narrative of its domestication and early spread across East and South Asia.

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