Hemudu is located in China near the Yangtze River. This is an archeaological site that dates back as early as 7000 years ago. There is evidence of rice, gourds, wild vegetables, water buffalo, pigs, dogs and cord wrapped pottery. In northern China there is also evidence of domestication of dogs and pigs. There are also subterranean houses and storage pits, even though hunting and gathering was done in this area. Recently at the Zhejiang Agricultural University (of China) they examined 25 spickelets that dated back to as early as 5000 BC. Half of the spikelets showed evidence of cultivated rice. The other half showed evidence of wild rice.
This is the earliest human grown rice so far discovered.This data suggests that the wild and cultivated white rice were mixed together. Hemudu is known to be the oldest site with rice cultivation in the world.
Sources
http://probe.nalusda.gov:8000/otherdocs/rgn/rgn8/v8p76.html http://www.yuyao-pages.com/hemu.html
Greg Hilger