5000 BC

There have been many assumptions regarding the origins of rice, but it is believed that the plant is of such antiquity, that precise data about the time and place of its development will never be known. Botanical and linguistic evidence prove that rice started developing from eastern India, through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and northern Vietnam. There are many unproven tales related to the origin of rice, yet historians have little or no confidence in any.

Rice is believed to have been cultivated in south eastern Asia since ancient times, where it is one of the oldest of food crops: specimens discovered in China date back to 5,000 B.C.
Nonetheless, its cultivation is considered to have begun simultaneously in many countries over 6,500 years ago. Rice has first been domesticated in the region of the Yangtze River Valley and soon afterwards the two major varieties of Indica and Japonica rice were being grown in Central China.