Case Study

A 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles unearthed in China is the earliest example ever found of one of the world's most popular food. It also suggests an Asian—not Italian—origin for noodles.

The beautifully preserved, long, thin yellow noodles (resembled hand-pulled La-Mian noodles) were found inside an overturned sealed bowl at the Lajia archaeological site in northwestern China.(Than,2005) The bowl was buried under ten feet (three meters) of sediment.

Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old.

Prior to the discovery of noodles at the Lajia archaeological site, the earliest record of noodles appears in a book written during China's East Han Dynasty sometime between A.D. 25 and 220, Lu said.

With this recent discovery, the answer to the long argument over who first created the noodles may be China.