World's earliest rice specimen

Archaeologists have discovered a 12,000-year-old rice kernel inside a cave at the Yuchanyan cultural relics in Hunan province of China.

A 12,000-year-old rice kernel discovered in China may well be the earliest cultivated rice specimen in the world.

The rice kernel was one among six kernels as well as some ceramic relics found by archaeologists in a cave at the Yuchanyan cultural relics in Hunan province, Xinhua reports.

The specimen would belong to the transitional period between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic Ages (10,000 years ago), or even earlier, said Yuan Jiarong, director of the provincial archaeological research institute.

'As the oldest cultivated rice specimen in the world, the discovery marks the significance of central China in the origin of the world's rice cultivation culture,' said Yuan.

He said the other five grains, which were found nearer to the Earth's surface, were still to be dated.

Yuan said locals had shown him the cave in 1998 when he was holding a training course there. The cave, five metres above the ground, covers an area of 100 square metres.

Several Chinese universities in association with the department of anthropology of Harvard University, Boston University and Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have been researching on the origins of rice in China.

Four rice kernels were discovered in the Yuchanyan cultural relics in 1993 and 1995, the earliest rice specimens to be discovered.

They were dated to the period between Palaeolithic and Neolithic Ages and pushed back the then generally accepted history of rice production by as much as 4,000 years.