The forest hunter-gatherers of the middle Yangtze River basin, who were the first to invent pottery and led a sedentary lifestyle, may have begun to cultivate rice during the Bølling-Allerød interstadial global warming period. The earliest rice cultivation may have dated back to 14 000 calibrated (cal.) years before present (YBP). The global warming at 9000 cal. YBP in the early Holocene brought the development of the rice cultivation to the middle Yangtze River basin. On the other hand, ancient rice-cultivating and piscatorial society met a crisis at 4200–4000 cal. YBP that was characterized by a significant cooling of the climate. This climate deterioration led the northern wheat/barley-cultivating pastoral people to migrate to the south and invade, ultimately bringing about the collapse of the rice-cultivating and piscatorial society in the Yangtze River basin.