In spite of the obscurity of the beginnings of cultivation in each region, it is certain that they occurred at very different periods. One of the most ancient examples of cultivated plants is in a drawing representing figs, found in Egypt in the pyramid of Gizeh. The epoch of the construction of this monument is uncertain. Authors have assigned a date varying between fifteen hundred and four thousand two hundred years before the Christian era. Supposing it to be two thousand years, its actual age would be four thousand years. Now, the construction of the pyramids could only have been the work of a numerous, organized people, possessing a certain degree of civilization, and consequently an established agriculture, dating from some centuries back at least. In China, two thousand seven hundred years before Christ, the Emperor Chenming instituted the ceremony at which every year five species of useful plants are sown—rice, sweet potato, wheat, and two kinds of millet.[2] These plants must have been cultivated for some time in certain localities before they attracted the emperor’s attention to such a degree. Agriculture appears, then, to be as ancient in China as in Egypt. The constant relations between Egypt and Mesopotamia lead us to suppose that an almost contemporaneous cultivation existed in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. And it may have been equally early in India and in the Malay Archipelago. The history of the Dravidian and Malay peoples does not reach far back, and is sufficiently obscure, but there is no reason to believe that cultivation has not been known among them for a very long time, particularly along the banks of the rivers.