Whether the domestic cultivation of rice originated in the Pearl River Valley, or the Yangtze River Valley, there is little doubt that the process took place somewhere around 13,000 years ago, in China.
It is probably no coincidence that both valleys have origins or passages in the Yunnan Province, which is the Chinese end of the “Southern Silk Road”, as the Chinese call it. This very ancient route of trade, arguably the earliest known in the world, passes through Upper Myanmar, to both the Brahmaputra Valley and eventually the delta of the Ganges and Brahamaputra; and an alternative route, which appears, historically, to have continued through Mandalay, in Burma, to reach what archaeologists refer to as the Indo- Burmese area. What we know, today, as Cox’s Bazar District.
Both of these southern terminals lie, today, in the lands of Bangladesh.
That the first traces of rice, south of the Himalayas, appears to have been found in what these same archaeologists call the “Indo-Gangetic” plain, with dating evidence of 7,000 to 8,000 BCE, and certain domesticated rice, with dates from 3rd millennium BCE, raises some fascinating questions about the origins of trade along this “Southern Silk Road”.
Whilst confirming his certainty of the early existence of this trade route, Professor Bin Yang of Singapore National University can adduce only the prospect of Malaysian tin in the great artefacts of the mid last millennium BCE Chinese Bronze Age, and carbon dated Money Cowries in tombs of 3rd century BCE in Yunnan Province, for earliest dating of such trading linkages.
That the domesticated rice, originating in China, found in the Ganges Basin, of which the Delta, and today’s lands of Bangladesh were both gateway and crossroads, dates from at least the 2nd or 3nd millennium BCE, may shed some light on the dating of the origins of such trans Himalayan trade.
The fact that, at Wari Bateshwar, in Narshingdhi, silver coinage dated to before the middle of that last millennium BCE, has been found, suggests that such trade down the Brahmaputra, on the banks of which, in its pre 18th century course, this now famous archaeological site stands, has long implied substantial trading origins of a much earlier period.
The development of “trading tokens” which is, essentially, what coins are, may be considered to be one that it could well have taken millennia of barter trade to inspire. It seems likely that such token trading would mark an inbalance in the mutual quantity of barter goods, requiring, essentially, an “IOU” of substance.
Today, Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest producers of rice, but it seems entirely logical, given the very early dating of the Gangetic crop, that the world wide spread of rice may well have had some significant origins in the rich trading centre that was the Ganges Delta.
That ‘large deposits’ of rice have been recovered from Roman encampments in Germany, of 1st century CE, suggests that it was, already, a well established crop in Europe, especially Italy, by then. The documentary and archaeological evidence of trade between Rome and the Ganges Delta from the very earliest years of the Common Era... Roman glass in Wari Bateshwar, and the reference by the great Roman historian and geographer, Strabo, in his famous work, Geographia, published about year 1 CE, to “those who sail from Egypt, even to the Ganges”... suggests that, quite apart from the silks, cotton, herbs, spices, pearls and precious metals, rice may well have been amongst the cargoes. Italy, after all, still grows abundant quantities.
It took far longer for rice to arrive in the Americas, carried by European colonists. Whether the mediaeval links between the Ganges delta and Africa were responsible for more intensive cultivation in Africa, it is hard to say.
Such consideration of edible cargoes, then, raises more questions. Mangoes would be another interesting case in point. Since a fruit that appears to have originated in the foothills of the Himalayas, on the fringes of the Ganges basin, with its trading gateway in the delta, has become internationally almost ubiquitous in tropical climates, questions may reasonably be raised about its transfer.
When online references to such subjects as mangoes refers to the “northern India-Burma region”, the researcher may understand the origin of authorship to probably be in India. Mangoes, like Rice, and the, “Indo Gangetic plain” are a case in point. Quite why Bangladesh, comprising a good 25% of the Ganges basin, including its gateway to the sea in the deltaic lands, and clearly the significant lands between modern India and Burma, should rate no mention is a curiosity that leads any interested researcher, perhaps, to consider what, exactly, India wants to hide.
Mongoes, online sources imply, were domesticated in, or around, the lands of Bangladesh. By 2,000 BCE, they were a widely established fruit crop across the Indian sub continent. During the 18th century, we are told, European colonists took the fruit tree to Africa, the Americas, and East and South East Asia.
In fact, it would be extraordinary if some of the African, and South East Asian mango trees did not originate in pre Common Era times, carried by the traders we know travelled from those parts. Similarly, the well established contacts between the Ganges delta lands and North east Africa in the 14th and 15th centuries might suggest the transfer of such an abundant and popular fruit at that time.
All of which might give the deniers of ancient trade through the Ganges delta, the gateway to the world, in early times, for a large swathe of central and southern Asia, food for thought.
The evidence of the lands of Bangladesh as an ancient, very ancient centre of international trade... possibly one of the earliest in the world... is growing, and is compelling. Documentary evidence may lead the way in supporting the supposition, and archaeological evidence, such as it is, does nothing to contradict it. Circumstantial and empirical evidence tends that way, as well, and, not least, the evidence of two of the requisites of human survival and civilisation itself: language and food.
Western centric historiography has written most modern history from the period of the destruction of the Caliphates... peerless in their science, arts and education... but, slowly and surely, that bias is being corrected. The facts, allowed to speak for themselves, suggest an alternative history to that conventional, western, wisdom, and the resurrection of such as monolithic China, and such ancient states as those of, especially, northern India, and central Africa, may yet transform the modern world view of many peoples across the world, including the peoples of Bangladesh.
