Millet Diffusion and Subsistence Diversification in Late Neolithic Central China: Perspective from Archaeological, Archaeobotanical, Stable Isotopic and Genetic Evidences

The origin and spread of agriculture, accompanied with development and movement of populations, played an important role in human prehistory. China is one of the earliest centers for the origins of agriculture parallel to the Near East, with millets in the north and rice in the south. Recent studies showed the spread and intensification of millet not only made a significant role for the occurrence of the early civilizations in the Yellow River (YR) regions of northern China, but also left extensive impact on nearby islands as well as the Eurasia steppe. Here we trace the dispersal of millets farming in the Central Plains of the YR by using interdisciplinary research combing the archaeological, archaeobotanical, stable isotopic and genetic evidences in the literature.Two stages of millets subsistence were identified with broomcorn millet first appeared almost simultaneously across a wide range of northern China, by around 6,000 years ago (during the Yangshao period) foxtail millet gradually replaced broomcorn millet and finally became the dominant cereal food there. Our results also suggest that the dispersal and intensification of foxtail millets might be driven by large-scale population expansions from the YR, and that the growing proportion and intensification of rice farming in the Late Neolithic Longshan populations in the YR regions was in parallel with population genetic contribution from South China, showing that the northward dispersal of rice farming was combined with population movement.

Keywords: Foxtail millet, Ancient DNA, Archaeobotanical, Agricultural Dispersals.