E.N. Anderson Department of Anthropology University of California, Riverside Chinese food today is the product of thousands of years of development, involving, among other things, borrowing hundreds of crops from western Asia, India, Southeast Asia, and most recently the New World. Even things like Maya cactus fruit have appeared on the Chinese market. But before all this, there was a long period of development, involving the independent invention of agriculture, the domestication of millets and rice, the coming of ancient Near Eastern crops, and the development of an agrarian civilization based on highly innovative Chinese technology. Many important new findings on this early period have appeared recently. This talk will cover the rise of China's agriculture before the coming of New World crops. May 22, 2014