Hunting and gathering
societies of Southeast Asia were nomadic, meaning that they often
moved from place to place, looking for new sources of food. This
nomadic lifestyle changed dramatically when people began to stay in
one place and farm the land.
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Tubers and millet (a grain) were the first cultivated foods. Rather than moving to new areas to find food, communities began to plant and harvest foods in one area of land. Cultivation of the land led to the development of sedentary societies, societies in which people are settled in one place. Now people planted rice where they wanted it to grow, instead of just looking for places where it grew naturally. |
Rather than gathering foods every day, these early rice cultivating communities could save the extra harvested rice for the future. Instead of gathering wild rice from the forest, farmers developed a system for growing rice.
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The land had to be plowed and prepared for planting, and water buffaloes and oxen were tamed to do this farm work. Seeds from the previous season had to be planted, fields had to be weeded, and harvested rice had to be threshed.
These women are threshing rice in the same way it has been done for thousands of years. |
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