by hilzoy
Often, of an evening, when the fire burns low in the hearth and the moon is full, I lie back in my armchair and consider life's deepest enigmas. Is there a God? What is the meaning of life? Can we make sense of action at a distance? And, most vexing of all, who invented the noodle?
I can stop wondering now:
"The remains of the world's oldest noodles have been unearthed in China. The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood.Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old.
Scientists tell the journal Nature that the noodles were made using grains from millet grass - unlike modern noodles, which are made with wheat flour.
The discovery goes a long way to settling the old argument over who first created the string-like food."
Take heart, fellow seekers after truth! Slowly but surely, knowledge advances, and the forces of ignorance and darkness fall back. We have conquered the origins of pasta; they have only the three branches of government. Who can doubt that victory will one day be ours?
Left behind by the original worshippers at the shrine of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Posted by: Andrew | October 12, 2005 at 11:17 PM
Andrew: OMG! Evidence of His Noodly Appendages!!!
Posted by: hilzoy | October 12, 2005 at 11:23 PM
The pasta depicted here looks exactly like the pasta I made last Thursday, which I forgot about and was found, just in time yesterday, at the back of the refrigerator.
Whether this is proof of the evolution of noodledom or the grounds for belief in the original intent of the intelligently designed God of pasta is something only George W. Bush is qualified to decide.
Posted by: John Thullen | October 13, 2005 at 01:42 AM
JT: Yes, either in propria persona or dressed up as Harriet Miers:
Posted by: hilzoy | October 13, 2005 at 01:48 AM
I thought everybody knew that pasta was invented in China. And that Marco Polo brought the idea back to Italy, assuming that part's true.
Posted by: rilkefan | October 13, 2005 at 02:15 AM
I bet it just needs a little soy sauce, some nice veggies, and it would be delicious.
Posted by: Matt Brown | October 13, 2005 at 05:20 AM
...buried during a catastrophic flood
proof that the Biblical flood really happened! take that, unbelievers!
Posted by: cleek | October 13, 2005 at 08:25 AM
I question the gaps in the pasta fossil record.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | October 13, 2005 at 09:21 AM
why, why, why, would someone twirl the lovely sweet spags and just leave it there? what is this? this behavoir, it's wackadoo.
Posted by: 3legcat | October 13, 2005 at 10:04 AM
proof that the Biblical flood really happened! take that, unbelievers!
Yeah and the dates line up pretty well too. How much more evidence do we need before we just admit the Young-Earth Creationists are right?
Posted by: Jeremy Osner | October 13, 2005 at 11:16 AM
"I question the gaps in the pasta fossil record."
Yeah, me too. How orzo became pappardelle became ziti became ravioli, all from the primordial ooze of flour and water, is beyond me. That they teach this sort of stuff in the schools accounts for, among all the other heathen, liberal stuff in our culture, the killings at Columbine High School.
"this behavior, it's wackadoo."
Not at all, Here's what happened (I read this in a Focus on the Family pamphlet). Guy was running a Chinese restaurant bout 400,000 years ago. He made a plate of noodles, his specialty. He sprayed it with lacquer, along with the moo shu pork dish, and displayed it prominently in the front window to entice the passerbys during the lunch crush. A nearby stegosaurus turned around and accidentally destroyed his restaurant with a sweep of the tail.
Everyone ran for their lives.
Guy lost his restaurant and his shirt, and the creditors hounded him to an early grave, a death also hastened by the unfortunate confluence of the fact that he lost his health insurance at the same time his Dynasty cut Medicaid.
But who cares about him? The main thing we know is that nothing has changed since God created noodles. You can see the identical plate of lacquered noodles today in any neighborhood Chinese restaurant in your major metropolitan areas.
Posted by: John Thullen | October 13, 2005 at 11:21 AM
How orzo became pappardelle became ziti became ravioli, all from the primordial ooze of flour and water, is beyond me.
and then there's the matter of the so-called "egg-noodles", which can take the same forms as eggless pasta, but clearly represents a different gastrotype. is this evidence of convergent evolution, or of an intelligent designer who liked to try new things, depending on what raw ingredients he had available that Day ?
Posted by: cleek | October 13, 2005 at 11:45 AM
I'd like to see a closer analysis of the DNA of the plant-stuff involved. If it was *durum* millet, then -- Marco Polo be damned -- the Italians got in there first.
AL DENTE!
Posted by: dr ngo | October 13, 2005 at 06:28 PM
And somewhere, some very hungry person is still waiting for their takeout delivery.
Posted by: Kevin T. Keith | October 14, 2005 at 03:41 PM