RICE

The cradle of rice civilizations is Asia. Among the immense expanses of water that saw the origin and growth of rice in the Far East, every religious aspect, every family occasion, every social, military and political phenomenon is permeated by rice. As for the origins of this grass, fossil finds dating back five thousand years BC. place them in the Yang Tze valley, but more recent research would push back the prehistory of this plant. From the Far East, rice began to spread towards the West only after millennia, arriving in Mesopotamia, where it was cultivated in the 4th century BC, to reach Europe as a food product with Alexander the Great.