Rice

Rice is a kind of grain, or grass, like wheat, millet, or barley, which provides carbohydrate to people who eat its seeds. It grows wild in southeast Asia. People probably first began to farm rice in Thailand, about 4000 BC. From there, people learned how to grow rice in southern China (north of Thailand) and in India (west of Thailand).
Certainly people were growing rice in India in the Harappan period (about 2500 BC) and in China in the late Stone Age (about 3000 BC). Rice may have been brought to West Asia and Greece about 300 BC by the armies of Alexander the Great. By the time of the Roan Empire, people were growing some rice around the Mediterranean Sea, in southern Europe and North Africa including Egypt (but not as much as in China or India).
By 800 AD, thanks to trade with India and Indonesia, people in East Africa were also growing rice. It was probably Chinese farmers who first invented the rice paddy. This is a system of growing rice in artificial (manmade) ponds, which saves water and also helps to kill weeds.
People usually cook rice by boiling or steaming it to make it soft. You can eat it plain, or with a sauce of vegetables or meat or fish, or sweetened and baked into rice pudding. Or you can crush rice into a powder and use it to make rice noodles. Rice is a good source of carbohydrates (energy).