1. Millet

There were three crops that were most important to East Asia in ancient times. The earliest domesticated crop in northern China was millet, or what modern Chinese call millets. It has not yet been determined what kind of weed was the ancestor of millet. Weeds similar to millet are widely distributed in Eurasia.

About 9,000 to 7,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Huaxia people on the banks of the middle reaches of the Yellow River, in today's Henan Province and Hebei Province, began to cultivate millet artificially. This was the first time agriculture appeared in northern China. With the stable food source provided by millet cultivation, these people were the first in the north to begin the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to a sedentary agricultural society.

Over the following centuries, the cultivation of millet gradually expanded, spreading downstream along the Yellow River in the east to the area of today's Shandong Province, and upstream along the Yellow River in the west to the Guanzhong Basin along the Yellow River as well as the Weihe River to the southeastern part of Gansu Province.

As a modern crop, millet has serious shortcomings, not only lower yields, but also difficult to increase production even under very good water and fertilizer conditions. However, in dry and infertile soils, millet can still maintain a relatively stable yield. With its short growing season, millet is almost always the most water-efficient grain, and is highly resistant to disease. For the pioneers of northern China, where agricultural technology was just beginning, the domestication of millet was of great significance.

2. Corn

The existence of another crop, jik, has already been mentioned in Kibli. It was as important as millet in the minds of the ancient Chinese.?

The domestication of millet came a little later than that of millet. When agriculture was just getting started, Northern China was going through a period of dry and cold weather. Although both corn and millet are dryland crops, corn's ability to withstand drought and poor soils is still not the same as that of millet.

Millet grows best at an average annual temperature of 6-10 degrees Celsius and a precipitation of 350-450 millimeters. Corn, on the other hand, prefers an environment with an average annual temperature of 8-10 degrees and a precipitation of 450-550 millimeters. As the climate gradually turns warmer and wetter, corn begins to spread westward from the warmer and wetter parts of the eastern North China Plain.

Once corn became viable, its slightly higher yield relative to millet became important. Higher yields meant that more people could be fed, supporting larger settlements and more complex social patterns. Long-term cultivation of millet and corn agriculture finally enabled the Chinese ancestors to become the first of many groups in East Asia to distinguish themselves and enter the age of civilization.

The Chinese people have a very full understanding of the importance of corn. Corn was also known as ji in pre-Qin. The Zhou people believed that their ancestor was Houji. The "Hou" here is the ancient Chinese name for the chief. Tracing their ancestors to Houji fully demonstrates the importance the Zhou people attached to millet. Later, "Jik" became an important part of the name of the state, "Jik", which was the basis for the establishment of the state.

3. Rice

At the same time in southern China, there was also a group of people who were moving rapidly toward civilization with the support of another crop. This crop is also the only one of the three major cereal crops of East Asian origin that still maintains its status as the main source of food for the Chinese people.

Thirty percent of China's arable land is devoted to rice cultivation, and more than half of the country's population eats rice as their staple food. Northeast and the south as eating rice-based needless to say, even in northern China, history also relies heavily on the south of the northern transportation of rice to solve the food problem, said rice is China's first food crop is not too much. And the domestication of rice is from China.

Today, wild rice grows in southern China, fujian, hunan, jiangxi, yunnan, guangdong, guangxi and hainan, especially in the two guangdong and hainan for more. There are three theories as to where wild rice was domesticated into cultivated rice: the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, southern China, and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Plant fossils of cultivated rice have been found in all three regions, and wild rice was distributed in all of them in ancient times.

Based on the abundance of fossil evidence of cultivated rice, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River seem to be the region where rice was first domesticated. However, genetic studies of cultivated rice show that the genetic haplotypes of the organelles of cultivated rice in China are closest to those of wild rice in South China, and that the most likely site of domestication was in the lower reaches of the Pearl River.

Like wild corn, the seeds of wild rice fall off automatically when they mature. Beginning in 10,000 B.C., ancestors in southern China began collecting the seeds of wild rice for food. This plant of great potential soon showed its worth, and the inhabitants of southern China soon began to grow rice in captivity.

The characteristics of wild rice that made it inconvenient to collect and eat were gradually improved through domestication, with the immature spikes of wild rice becoming closed, the awns shortening and disappearing, and the color of the seeds changing from dark to white. After undergoing these changes, cultivated rice became an irreplaceable staple food crop in the south.

4. Wheat

Wheat was widely cultivated in northern China during the Spring and Autumn Period. The Zuo Zhuan (左传) once told a story about a sorcerer who predicted that Duke Jing of Jin would not be able to eat the new wheat of the next year, so at the time of the wheat harvest of the next year, Duke Jing of Jin called the sorcerer and said that he would soon be able to eat the wheat, and the sorcerer, who had been bewitching the public, was put to death.

However, just as he was about to eat the new wheat, he suddenly felt abdominal pain, and while going to the toilet, he unfortunately fell into the pit and died, not being able to eat the wheat after all. There is no doubt that the introduction of wheat had an extremely profound impact on China. However, the demographic superiority of the Chinese people had been established long before the introduction of wheat. Millet and corn were the most important of all, and wheat was at best the icing on the cake.

5, soybeans

In prehistoric times, soybeans were mainly grown in the northeast of China. With the continuous breeding and cultivation of mankind, the oily components of soybeans continue to increase. To the Warring States period, the ancients called "beans" soybean began to replace the millet, known as and corn alongside the important crops.

In the works of the Hundred Schools of Thought, the existence of beans and corn is almost always mentioned when talking about agriculture. In "Mozi", it is mentioned that the cultivation of crops, trees and art gather beans and corn. In Xunzi, it is mentioned that businessmen and industrialists do not cultivate fields but gather beans and millet. In the Warring States period, beans and millet are synonymous with food.