A small town in Zhejiang Province has been identified as China's earliest site where rice was grown - about 700 years earlier than previously believed.

The research, by scientists at Shanghai-based East China Normal University's institute for estuarine and coastal research, was published in the international journal "Science" on September 27.

The scientists found the evidence at Kuahuqiao in Hangzhou Bay where micro-charcoal sediments were discovered in ancient stratigraphic layers, three to five meters beneath the earth.

As well grass pollens were found.

Taken together, says Chen Zhongquan, a tenured professor of ECNU and one of the article's co-authors, the fact that the times were identical went to suggest that there was rice planting at that time.

"The evidence we collected from Kuahuqiao reveals these Neolithic communities selected lowland swamps for their rice cultivation and settlement, using fire to clear alder-dominated wetland scrub and prepare the site for occupation," Chen said.

"That could be the earliest rice cultivation practice discovered so far in the lower Yangtze River region, which is the country's center for rice domestication," he explained.

Before this, it had been accepted that people in ancient Hemudu in southern Zhejiang, who lived at about 7,000 years ago, were the predecessor of rice planters in coastal China.

The "burning-for-planting" method also marked a changing lifestyle from hunting and gathering by Mesolithic foragers to the food-producing economy of the Neolithic farmers, Chen said.

Research results also showed that growing rice in the area was stopped when seawater began regular flooding about 7,550 years ago.

(Source: www.shanghai.gov.cn )