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Common carp aquaculture in Neolithic China dates back 8,000 years

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages 1415–1418 (2019)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 24 September 2019

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Abstract

Despite the growing importance of farmed fish for contemporary economies, the origins of aquaculture are poorly known. Although it is widely assumed that fish domestication began much later than the domestication of land animals, the evidence is largely negative. Here, we use age-mortality and species-selection profiles of fish bones from prehistoric East Asia to show that managed aquaculture of common carp (Cyprinus carpio) was present at the Early Neolithic Jiahu site, Henan Province, China, by around 6000 bc.

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Fig. 1: Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) standard BL distributions and cyprinid species compositions from archaeological sites in China and Japan.

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Data availability

The pharyngeal bone and tooth remains analysed here are curated in the following institutions: Jiahu: Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing; Tianluoshan: Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Hangzhou; Asahi: Aichi Prefectural Centre for Archaeological Operations, Yatomi City, Aichi; Irienaiko and Akanoi: Cultural Property Protection Division, Shiga Prefectural Board of Education, Ōtsu City, Shiga.

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  • 24 September 2019

    An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Yuan for permission to examine pharyngeal remains from Jiahu, Z. Li and P. Lü for photographs of the pharyngeal teeth, Ō. Nishizawa and Matsukawa Village office for permission to measure carp from Matsukawa, and Y. Fujioka for advice concerning carp aquaculture. The research leading to these results has received funding from JSPS KAKENHI Grants (nos. 22401002 and 26300004), the NEOMAP project of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (no. H-04), the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant no. 646612), the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (7th Handa Japanese Archaeology Fellowship under the International Jomon Culture Conference), National Basic Research Program of China (grant no. 2015CB53802) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41472148).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lake Biwa Museum, Kusatsu, Japan

    Tsuneo Nakajima

  2. Eurasia3angle Research Group, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany

    Mark J. Hudson

  3. Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Junzo Uchiyama

  4. Research Center for Asian Archaeology of Industry and Culture, Ehime University, Matsuyama, Japan

    Keisuke Makibayashi

  5. Department for the History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Juzhong Zhang

Authors
  1. Tsuneo Nakajima
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  2. Mark J. Hudson
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  3. Junzo Uchiyama
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  4. Keisuke Makibayashi
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  5. Juzhong Zhang
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Contributions

T.N. conceived the initial study and conducted analyses of fish remains from Jiahu with critical input from K.M. and J.Z. M.J.H. and J.U. conducted the fieldwork at Matsukawa. All authors interpreted the results and implications. T.N. and M.J.H. wrote the manuscript with input from J.U. who prepared the figures.

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Correspondence to Tsuneo Nakajima.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–4 and Tables 1 and 2.

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Nakajima, T., Hudson, M.J., Uchiyama, J. et al. Common carp aquaculture in Neolithic China dates back 8,000 years. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 1415–1418 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0974-3

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