The history of rice cultivation is an interdisciplinary subject that studies archaeological and documentary evidence to explain how rice was first domesticated and cultivated by humans, the spread of cultivation to different regions of the planet, and the technological changes that have impacted cultivation over time. The current scientific consensus, based on archaeological and linguistic evidence, is that Oryza sativa rice was first domesticated in the Yangtze River basin in China 9,000 years ago. Cultivation, migration and trade spread rice around the world—first to much of East Asia, and then further abroad, and eventually to the Americas as part of the Columbian exchange.

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