Despite the growing importance of farmed fish for contemporary economies, the origins of aquaculture are poorly known. Although it is widely assumed that fish domestication began much later than the domestication of land animals, the evidence is largely negative. Here, we use age-mortality and species-selection profiles of fish bones from prehistoric East Asia to show that managed aquaculture of common carp (Cyprinus carpio) was present at the Early Neolithic Jiahu site, Henan Province, China, by around 6000 BC.