Legend or historical fact: archaeological discoveries about the “five grains”
“Five grains” in plant archaeology and literature
Archaeology is divided into many majors, such as prehistoric archaeology, Shang and Zhou archaeology, Qin and Han archaeology, frontier archaeology, etc., in addition to a relatively large profession called scientific and technological archaeology, that is, using natural science research methods to solve archaeological problems. Scientific and technological archaeology includes many branches, such as chronology, environmental archaeology, human bone archaeology, animal archaeology, botanical archaeology, etc., and I am engaged in plant archaeology.
Recently, the more famous news about archaeology is the Sanxingdui excavation. If a classmate here asks me about the bronze mask unearthed from Sanxingdui, I can’t answer it, but if you want to ask me what Sanxingdui people ate at that time? I can answer the question of whether to eat rice (rice) or millet (millet). At that time, the Sanxingdui people ate both rice and millet, in other words, the agricultural production of the Sanxingdui culture was characterized by mixed rice and drought, growing both rice and millet and chyme. This is because before the Sanxingdui people, the first group of people to enter the Chengdu Plain actually came from the Ganqing area, and they entered the Chengdu Plain by eating millet. This falls under the scope of our botanical archaeological research.
Regarding the discipline positioning of plant archaeology, I summarize it in three sentences, one is to discover and analyze ancient plant remains through archaeological excavations, the key point here is the plant remains unearthed through archaeological excavations, why? The second sentence gives an explanation: because we want to study the interrelationship between ancient humans and plants. In other words, plant archaeology is not to study plants, but to study the stories about people and cultures behind plants, so only by examining plant remains unearthed from archaeological sites can we know their human background. So why should we understand the interrelationship between humans and plants? This is the answer of the third sentence: to restore the way of life of ancient humans and to explain the development and process of human culture. In fact, restoring the way of life of ancient humans and explaining the development and process of human culture is also the ultimate goal of modern archaeology.
We all know that plants are organic matter that decays and disappears after a long period of burial. However, the life of ancient humans is inseparable from fire, and plants that are burned by fire consciously or unconsciously in human daily life, if they are not burned into ash, may become carbonized substances, that is, carbonized plant remains. Carbonized plant remains are inorganic substances, so they can be buried and preserved in the soil of archaeological sites for a long time. The density of carbonized substances is less than 1, so if the site accumulation soil is put into water, the carbonized substances lighter than water float on the surface of the water, and the soil particles heavier than water sink to the bottom, so that the carbonized plant remains and the soil can be separated, so that they can be extracted. This method of discovering and obtaining plant remains is called “flotation”.
Flotation method is the most effective method of discovering and obtaining plant remains through archaeological excavations, which has been widely used in archaeological work in China since the beginning of this century, and has found and unearthed a very large number of ancient plant remains in hundreds of archaeological sites, and its number may not be imagined by students here. For example, my lab alone now has millions of carbonized plant seeds in the collection, which have been selected from more than 100 archaeological sites. Among these carbonized plant remains, the largest number are crops. As we just said, what we want to restore is the relationship between ancient humans and plants, and the plants most closely related to humans are those plants that people eat, when humans enter the agricultural society, the plants that humans eat the most are naturally crops, so more than 99% of the plant remains found in archaeological sites are crops.
Interestingly, through the identification and statistical discovery of the remains of agricultural crops unearthed by archaeology, although the number of crops unearthed at archaeological sites before the Qin and Han dynasties was large, there were only six species, namely rice, millet, chyme, soybean, wheat and hemp. That is to say, before the Qin and Han dynasties, the crops grown in our ancient Chinese agriculture were these six, of which hemp was a cash crop, and rice, millet, chyme, soybeans and wheat were food crops, also known as grains.
So, are these five grains found by archaeology related to the five grains in what we often call “abundant grains”?
The word five grains first came from the Analects of Microns: “If the four bodies are not diligent, the five grains are not divided, who is the master?” As a Confucian classic, the Analects have been repeatedly interpreted word by word by successive generations of Confucian scholars, including naturally the interpretation of the five grains. For example, Zhao Qi in the Eastern Han Dynasty believed that “the five grains are rice, millet, millet, wheat, and shuye”; Another Eastern Han Confucian scholar, Zheng Xuan, explained that “five grains, hemp, millet, millet, wheat, and beans.” Millet is millet, millet is millet, scientific name is millet, wheat is wheat, and anthracite and bean refer to soybeans. If the explanations of Zhao Qi and Zheng Xuan are combined, it coincides with the six crops we have found in botanical archaeology, not only in quantity, but also in the same species. This also confirms that the “five grains” recorded in ancient documents in China are real.
Regarding the literature of “five grains”, we can actually push forward. For example, Sima Qian in the early Western Han Dynasty listed the five grains corresponding to the hour in the Shiji Tianguan Book as wheat, millet, millet, anthracite, and hemp, the same as Zheng Xuan’s interpretation of the five grains. If you go back further, when the “Lü’s Spring and Autumn Trial Time” in the late Warring States period talks about the importance of sowing solar terms, the crops listed are grass, millet, rice, hemp, anthracite, wheat, and grass is millet. It is also in line with Zhao Qi and Zheng Xuan’s interpretation of Wugu.
According to this, according to historical records and archaeological findings, the five grains in the “five grains abundant” are not a legend, but a historical fact, including five kinds of grains rice, millet, chyme, soybeans and wheat, as well as a cash crop hemp.
Archaeological discoveries and documentation of the five grains
Below we will briefly introduce the archaeological discovery and analysis of grains.
●”Hep”
Let’s start with the “hemp” in the five grains. Hemp is marijuana, this name may cause misunderstanding among the students here, because now when marijuana is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is drugs. Cannabis contains a chemical component called “tetrahydrocannabinol”, which can cause hallucinogenic effects after smoking, and it is also addictive, so it is now banned from using and even cultivating marijuana in many countries. Cannabis as a plant has many varieties, most of which have extremely low THC content, such as native cannabis strains originating in China, which do not have hallucinogenic effects and are now called “industrial hemp”. Only a type of cannabis native to India possessed strong hallucinogenic effects and is now called “medicinal cannabis”.
Because the tetrahydrocannabinol content of industrial hemp originating in our country is extremely low and does not have hallucinogenic effects, so in ancient China, hemp is not a drug, but a very important fiber crop, in ancient Chinese history, the fiber raw materials of spinning and weaving are mainly industrial hemp. Now we talk about the annual agricultural production situation generally say “grain and cotton” production, why put cotton and grain side by side, because people not only have to eat but also dress, cotton as the main fiber raw material in the textile industry has a very important position in today’s agricultural production. In ancient China, the role and status of industrial hemp was equivalent to that of cotton today, so it makes sense that Zheng Xuan listed hemp as the first of the five grains.
Why didn’t cotton be used in ancient Chinese textiles? The cotton grown in the world today originated in Central and South America, and was only introduced to China after the Ming and Qing dynasties. There is also cotton in India and Africa, but Indian cotton and African cotton have poor fiber quality and cannot replace industrial hemp.
The earliest remains of industrial hemp found by archaeology can be traced back to the Yangshao culture period 5,000 years ago, but because the ancients mainly used hemp stalks, the amount of charred hemp seeds that floated out of the earth is not much compared to the other five crops. With the new discovery of plant archaeology, the origin time of industrial hemp should be able to push forward, and China’s ancient ancestors may have domesticated hemp very early and planted it as a main fiber raw material.
●Rice
●Rice
At the end of the 20th century, we found rice remains dating back 12,000 years at the site of Xianren Cave and Hanging Barrel Ring in Jiangxi Province, and the Jade Toad Rock site in Dao County, Hunan Province. At the beginning of this century, we also removed carbonized rice at the Shangshan site of Pujiang, Zhejiang, and the carbon 14 date is 10,000 years ago. A large number of rice husks were also found in the pottery pieces unearthed at the Shangshan site, and it was the people who mixed the rice husks into it when making pottery at that time, in order to make the clay perform better. The above archaeological evidence shows that the domestication of rice and the cultivation of rice agriculture have appeared in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China around 10,000 years ago.
By the time 8,000 years ago, there were more archaeological discoveries about rice farming. Seven or eight archaeological sites dating back to about 8,000 years ago have unearthed rice remains and traces related to rice agriculture. For example, at the Jia Lake site in Wuyang, Henan Province, we have soiled hundreds of carbonized rice grains through floating, and we have also found carbonized water chestnut and lotus root fragments.
7,000 years ago, rice farming entered a period of rapid development, the most famous of which was the discovery of the Hemudu site in Yuyao, Zhejiang. In recent years, we have found the Tianluo Mountain site near the Hemudu site, which belongs to the same period as the Hemudu site. A large amount of carbonized rice was unearthed from the site of Tianluo Mountain by flotation. In addition to new botanical discoveries, we have also found a lot of other evidence of ancient rice agriculture, such as rice fields, primitive farming tools, etc. This shows that by the time of the Hemudu culture 7,000 years ago, China’s ancient ancestors had begun to move towards a rice farming society.
● Millet and millet
The scientific name of the grain is millet, commonly known as millet; The scientific name of millet is millet, also known as millet, because the grains of these two grains are very small, so they are collectively called millet.
In the five grain records in the ancient documents listed above, students may have found that different records have different names for some grains, such as millet is also called grass, in fact, in ancient times millet was also called millet, and there are many names of millet, including anvil, millet, chyme and so on. Why did the ancients give these two millet so many names? Because millet is too important to Chinese history, they are the most important grain in ancient agriculture in northern China, and the core area of ancient Chinese civilization is in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, so I often say: yellow land, yellow river, yellow millet, together gave birth to the glorious ancient Chinese civilization.
At present, the earliest cultivated millet found by archaeology comes from the East Hulin site in Mentougou, Beijing, dated between 9,000 and 10,000 years ago, which is also the earliest millet grain found in the world. In addition, at the Xinglonggou site of the Ao Han Banner in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, a large amount of millet dating back about 8,000 years was unearthed through floating, mainly carbonized millet grains. Other important discoveries include the Yuhuazhai site in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, a settlement site of the Yangshao culture from which tens of thousands of carbonized millet and millet grains were extracted between 5,500 and 7,000 years ago.
In fact, in archaeological sites in northern China, as long as flotation is carried out, carbonized millet and millet grains have been unearthed without exception. The grain unearthed at archaeological sites in the southern region is mainly rice. This also fully reflects a characteristic of our ancient Chinese agriculture, that is, rice is grown in the south, and millet and millet are grown in the north.
● Soybeans
Let’s talk about soybeans. Soybeans are the most important oil crop in the world today. As mentioned earlier, the origin of rice was debated, and later according to our large number of archaeological findings, it was traced back to the source, and finally everyone determined that rice originated in China, and soybeans were recognized by the world as originating in China from the beginning.
Through plant archaeology, soybean remains have been unearthed at many sites, and the earliest cultivated soybeans that we can identify were unearthed at the Jia Lake site in Wuyang, Henan, 8,000 years ago. However, the size and morphological characteristics of soybeans unearthed at the Jiahu site are between wild soybeans and cultivated soybeans, reflecting that soybeans were still in the process of domestication at that time. The shape of soybeans unearthed at archaeological sites around 4,000 years ago is not much different from our current soybeans.
It should be emphasized that soybeans were not oil crops in ancient China, but food. Our ancient ancestors did not grow soybeans for oil, but cooked and eaten directly, called “bean soup” or “minced beans”. There are many different varieties of soybeans, and the fat content of different varieties varies greatly. The soybean varieties we now use to extract oil are actually improved over many generations, so that the oil content of soybeans has gradually increased. But some other soybean varieties are actually very low in fat, such as black beans.
●Wheat
Finally, wheat. The reason why I want to put wheat last, because among the “five grains”, only wheat did not originate in China. Wheat originated in West Asia, and later introduced into China, and gradually replaced millet and millet, becoming the main crop of agricultural production in northern China, resulting in the agricultural production pattern of “southern rice and northern wheat” in China today.
Since wheat is not of native Chinese origin, our research on wheat mainly focuses on the time and route of wheat introduction to China, and the impact on the development of ancient Chinese agriculture.
Regarding the time when wheat was introduced to China, we can find some clues through literature. For example, “Zuo Chuan Chenggong Chenggong Eighteen Years” recorded: “Zhou Zi has a brother but no wisdom, and he cannot distinguish the wheat, so he cannot stand.” “Zhou Zi is the Duke of Jin, and he has a brother with low intelligence and cannot distinguish between soybeans and wheat, so the minister of Jin decided to support Zhou Zi as the Marquis of Jin. This story shows that wheat was already commonly cultivated in China during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods at the latest, because the ability to identify wheat was one of the criteria for judging the intelligence of others at that time. In fact, as early as the earliest written oracle bone script in China, the hieroglyphs of “Mai” have appeared. In other words, wheat was introduced to China during the Yin Shang period 3,200 years ago.
Oracle bones are the earliest written records we can find so far, and if we go further, we can only rely on archaeology. In recent years, more and more early wheat remains have been discovered through plant archaeology, and we have directly dated many of them using accelerator mass spectrometry dating. Accelerator mass spectrometry dating methods require very small amounts of dating samples, and one grain of wheat is sufficient for dating. It was found that the vast majority of unearthed wheat dates within 4,000 years ago, and only a few grains of wheat unearthed in the Shandong Peninsula were dated between 4,000 and 4,500 years ago. In addition, wheat was unearthed at the Tongtiandong site in Jimunai County, located in the northwest corner of Xinjiang, and the dating data reached 5,000 years ago.
According to current archaeological findings, wheat has been introduced into China as early as 5,000 years ago; Around 4,000 years ago, wheat was introduced to the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Wheat cultivation soon became popular, and by the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, wheat had become a common crop in northern China.
However, it is strange that although wheat was widely cultivated during the Shang and Zhou dynasties, it still did not replace millet as the main crop in northern China as late as the Two Han Dynasty. For example, the “Records of History” records that Dong Zhongshu once wrote to Emperor Wudi of Han, mentioning that “it is not good to grow wheat in today’s Guanzhong”, so he suggested that the government promote the cultivation of wheat. Why is this happening? There are two important reasons.
The first reason is the climate constraints of agricultural production. Wheat originated in West Asia and belongs to the Mediterranean climate, characterized by hot and dry summers, cold and humid winters, and the main rainfall season is in winter and spring. The East Asian region where China is located belongs to the monsoon climate, which is characterized by high temperature and rainy summer, cold and dry winter, and the main precipitation is concentrated in summer. This difference in precipitation seasons has a great impact on wheat growth. Wheat is a summer harvest crop, winter sowing and summer harvest, spring is the growing period, the most need for water, but East Asia generally lacks rain in spring, there is a saying that “spring rain is as expensive as oil”, this situation is very unfavorable to the jointing and filling in the wheat growth period. Frequent rainfall in summer affects the ripening and harvest of wheat. Therefore, in order to grow wheat on a large scale, the ancient Chinese ancestors must first solve the irrigation problem, and the irrigation system can reach a certain level before large-scale wheat can be grown.
The second reason is more interesting, that is, the ancient Chinese ancestors did not know how to eat wheat. It sounds funny, but it’s true. There are many ancient Chinese texts that record wheat as an inferior grain, such as Yan Shigu’s “Urgent Passage”, which says: “Wheat rice and bean soup are the food and ears of wild farmers.” “Translated into modern parlance: rice steamed with wheat, porridge cooked with soybeans, that are eaten by the poor and inferior. So what did the superior people eat at that time? Eat rice steamed with millet or rice.
Why did the ancients belittle wheat like this? That’s because the ancient Chinese diet is a grain tradition, whether it is rice in the south or millet in the north, it is cooked or steamed whole. This grain tradition is not only reflected in the processing of grains, but also in the cooking methods of food, as well as the corresponding cooking utensils, tableware and other utensils. However, wheat must first be ground into flour before it can be processed into a variety of foods, and if the wheat grains are steamed or boiled whole, not only is it not easy to digest, but also has a poor taste and is difficult to swallow.
Because the whole steamed wheat is too unpalatable, later the ancient ancestors thought of a way to crush the wheat grains into crushed grains and then steam and eat, a bit like today’s corn bales. Therefore, a new word “wheat shavings” appeared in ancient documents, such as the “Three Kingdoms Zhi Yuan Shu Biography” records that after Yuan Shu was defeated, “the people were starved of food, and asked the cook, there were still thirty wheat crumbs”. That is to say, the soldiers have run out of food, and only wheat crumbs that no one likes to eat are left in the barracks, and the wheat crumbs here refer to crushed wheat grains.
According to historical records, it was probably at the turn of the two Han Dynasties that ancient Chinese ancestors gradually accepted and mastered the processing of flour milling and pasta, and wheat officially became the most important food crop in agricultural production in northern China. Interestingly, the appearance of pasta in ancient texts has created a new word “cake”, which refers to food that is ground into flour and processed into food, such as boiling water called “soup cake”, which is now noodles; The steamer steamed in a steamer is called “cooking cake”, which is now steamed buns; Those grilled on fire are called “baked cakes”, and so on.
brief summary
As a simple historical term, if we study it carefully, we can see a lot of very interesting historical facts, and from these historical facts, we can extend an aspect of the development process of ancient Chinese culture, including the way of life, thinking and even the transformation process of social structure of ancient ancestors, which are related to the ancient crops at that time. Therefore, the study of “five grains” is not a simple crop problem, but actually a problem of the formation and development of ancient Chinese culture.
(Author: Zhao Zhijun, doctoral supervisor, researcher of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, distinguished professor of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, chief expert of the archaeologist studio of Northwest University. Mainly dedicated to plant archaeology. His published papers include “Discipline Orientation and Research Content of Plant Archaeology”, “The Formation Process of Ancient Chinese Agriculture: Evidence for the Remains of Floating Soil Plants”, “Characteristics of Agricultural Economic Development in the Formation Period of Chinese Civilization”, etc. )