East Asians typically prefer social cohesion and harmony, rather than self-expression and individualism. They are ‘culturally tight’. While Latin Americans believe it’s fine to pick and choose your friends, East Asians tend to expect group loyalty.
I always found the idea that rice farming societies are more conformist very strange. Bengal was also a majority rice farming society but we have the stereotype of a Bengali being very prone to political violence. Perhaps that's specific to the urban culture of Dhaka and Kolkata.
As an East Asian, I've thought a lot about this in general. There are some problems I have with the hypotheses. I know people love the Talhelm story because it feeds that puzzle brain, simple, mechanistic story... part of our economics/stat brain dominance.
There are massive public works projects of a sort you don't see in the West, especially related to water: Grand Canal and Angkor Wat. But, I forget when it was but the proliferation of modern rice variants that need to be flooded or in standing water are a newer phenomenon. I don't have the dating offhand, but I would guess 800-1000 CE. Prior to that, the rice variants needed less coordination for water.
But, if you use say Nisbett's historical narrative of 200 BCE China/Greece from Geography of Thought... much of the precursors of collectivism/individualism are already in place. The debate bro culture of Greece vs. the pragmatism of Confucius. A culture rooted in individuality, logic, and deduction v. ying/yang- two things true at once. Good empirical example of this is the per capita lawyers in the west v. east. Many Chinese like to mention that there is not a word/idiom in Chinese for philosophy.
Here's something of interest and I don't know how it would fit. I am not a person heavily invested in the genetics/hbd debate, but Razib Khan has written a couple of Ancient DNA substacks/podcasts and I'm going to paraphrase. There is no genetic continuity between most modern Europeans, say Germans with the peoples' of those same geographic areas 4000+ years ago. I think he portrays the Yamnaya culture (steppe nomads) as wiping out all the former farmers in Europe. East Asians were semi genetically isolated due to geographical constraints and climatic events and are still directly descended from people in those geographic areas 35k - 45k+ years ago. It's been more of a continuous society/culture for a longer time period.
I definitely agree about massive public works, like the Grand Canal. What do you think the consequences were?
I think wet rice needs to be permanently flooded? I don't think this has changed over time.
Yes, definitely, I agree about the Yamnaya, they male line goes back to the steppe. But the female line is more local. The theory is that the Yamnaya wiped out indigenous men. But they also went to East Asia.
I did some research on rice for a grad school paper 10 years ago, but just have a faint recollection. It was just my impression that modern rice variants underwent changes over time that precipitated the need for flooding because they had a higher yield, but that this was a very long process. I thought I read in a paper that there were still a lot of dryland rice variants in China until a late period. I did a google search and it appears the transition was older than I remember.
"Unlike O. japonica, O. nivara can be exploited on a large scale without instituting cultivation or habitat change. The earliest type of rice agriculture used in the Ganges was likely dry cropping, with the plant's water needs provided by monsoonal rains and seasonal flood recession. The earliest irrigated paddy rice in the Ganges is at least the end of the second millennium BC and certainly by the beginning of the Iron Age"
"All species of wild rice are wetland species: however, the archaeological record implies that the original domestication of rice was to move it into a more or less dryland environment, planted along the edges of wetlands, and then flooded using natural flooding and annual rain patterns. Wet rice farming, including the creation of rice paddies, was invented in China about 5000 BCE, with the earliest evidence to date at Tianluoshan, where paddy fields have been identified and dated.
Paddy rice is more labor-intensive then dryland rice, and it requires an organized and stable ownership of land parcels. But it is far more productive than dryland rice, and by creating the stability of terracing and field construction, it reduces environmental damage caused by intermittent flooding. In addition, allowing the river to flood the paddies replenishes the replacement of nutrients taken from the field by the crop.
Direct evidence for intensive wet rice agriculture, including field systems, comes from two sites in the lower Yangtze (Chuodun and Caoxieshan) both of which date to 4200–3800 BCE, and one site (Chengtoushan) in the middle Yangtze at about 4500 BCE"
I always found the idea that rice farming societies are more conformist very strange. Bengal was also a majority rice farming society but we have the stereotype of a Bengali being very prone to political violence. Perhaps that's specific to the urban culture of Dhaka and Kolkata.
As an East Asian, I've thought a lot about this in general. There are some problems I have with the hypotheses. I know people love the Talhelm story because it feeds that puzzle brain, simple, mechanistic story... part of our economics/stat brain dominance.
There are massive public works projects of a sort you don't see in the West, especially related to water: Grand Canal and Angkor Wat. But, I forget when it was but the proliferation of modern rice variants that need to be flooded or in standing water are a newer phenomenon. I don't have the dating offhand, but I would guess 800-1000 CE. Prior to that, the rice variants needed less coordination for water.
But, if you use say Nisbett's historical narrative of 200 BCE China/Greece from Geography of Thought... much of the precursors of collectivism/individualism are already in place. The debate bro culture of Greece vs. the pragmatism of Confucius. A culture rooted in individuality, logic, and deduction v. ying/yang- two things true at once. Good empirical example of this is the per capita lawyers in the west v. east. Many Chinese like to mention that there is not a word/idiom in Chinese for philosophy.
Here's something of interest and I don't know how it would fit. I am not a person heavily invested in the genetics/hbd debate, but Razib Khan has written a couple of Ancient DNA substacks/podcasts and I'm going to paraphrase. There is no genetic continuity between most modern Europeans, say Germans with the peoples' of those same geographic areas 4000+ years ago. I think he portrays the Yamnaya culture (steppe nomads) as wiping out all the former farmers in Europe. East Asians were semi genetically isolated due to geographical constraints and climatic events and are still directly descended from people in those geographic areas 35k - 45k+ years ago. It's been more of a continuous society/culture for a longer time period.
Thank you Raymond.
I definitely agree about massive public works, like the Grand Canal. What do you think the consequences were?
I think wet rice needs to be permanently flooded? I don't think this has changed over time.
Yes, definitely, I agree about the Yamnaya, they male line goes back to the steppe. But the female line is more local. The theory is that the Yamnaya wiped out indigenous men. But they also went to East Asia.
Thank you for commenting!
I did some research on rice for a grad school paper 10 years ago, but just have a faint recollection. It was just my impression that modern rice variants underwent changes over time that precipitated the need for flooding because they had a higher yield, but that this was a very long process. I thought I read in a paper that there were still a lot of dryland rice variants in China until a late period. I did a google search and it appears the transition was older than I remember.
"Unlike O. japonica, O. nivara can be exploited on a large scale without instituting cultivation or habitat change. The earliest type of rice agriculture used in the Ganges was likely dry cropping, with the plant's water needs provided by monsoonal rains and seasonal flood recession. The earliest irrigated paddy rice in the Ganges is at least the end of the second millennium BC and certainly by the beginning of the Iron Age"
"All species of wild rice are wetland species: however, the archaeological record implies that the original domestication of rice was to move it into a more or less dryland environment, planted along the edges of wetlands, and then flooded using natural flooding and annual rain patterns. Wet rice farming, including the creation of rice paddies, was invented in China about 5000 BCE, with the earliest evidence to date at Tianluoshan, where paddy fields have been identified and dated.
Paddy rice is more labor-intensive then dryland rice, and it requires an organized and stable ownership of land parcels. But it is far more productive than dryland rice, and by creating the stability of terracing and field construction, it reduces environmental damage caused by intermittent flooding. In addition, allowing the river to flood the paddies replenishes the replacement of nutrients taken from the field by the crop.
Direct evidence for intensive wet rice agriculture, including field systems, comes from two sites in the lower Yangtze (Chuodun and Caoxieshan) both of which date to 4200–3800 BCE, and one site (Chengtoushan) in the middle Yangtze at about 4500 BCE"
https://www.thoughtco.com/origins-history-of-rice-in-china-170639
Yes. So wet rice has been farmed for thousands of years. Seems consistent with the rice theory of culture - not that I’m saying that’s the whole story