Millet noodles in Late Neolithic China (original) (raw)

Culinary archaeology

Nature volume 437, pages 967–968 (2005) Cite this article

A remarkable find allows the reconstruction of the earliest recorded preparation of noodles.

Abstract

Noodles have been a popular staple food in many parts of the world for at least 2,000 years1, although it is debatable whether the Chinese, the Italians or the Arabs invented them first. Here we analyse a prehistoric sample of noodles contained in a well preserved, sealed earthenware bowl discovered in the Late Neolithic2,3,4 archaeological site of Lajia in northwestern China. We identify millet as the source of the abundant seed-husk phytoliths and starch grains present in the vessel. This shows that the conversion of ground millet flour into dough that could be repeatedly stretched into long, thin strands for the preparation of boiled noodles was already established in this region 4,000 years ago.

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Figure 1: Late Neolithic noodles from China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China
    Houyuan Lu, Xiaoyan Yang, Naiqin Wu & Tung-Sheng Liu
  2. Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China
    Houyuan Lu
  3. Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, 100710, China
    Maolin Ye
  4. Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 70803, Louisiana, USA
    Kam-Biu Liu
  5. College of Environmental Science, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China
    Zhengkai Xia
  6. Qinghai Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Sining, 810007, China
    Xiaoyan Ren & Linhai Cai

Authors

  1. Houyuan Lu
  2. Xiaoyan Yang
  3. Maolin Ye
  4. Kam-Biu Liu
  5. Zhengkai Xia
  6. Xiaoyan Ren
  7. Linhai Cai
  8. Naiqin Wu
  9. Tung-Sheng Liu

Corresponding author

Correspondence toHouyuan Lu.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Lu, H., Yang, X., Ye, M. et al. Millet noodles in Late Neolithic China.Nature 437, 967–968 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/437967a

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Editorial Summary

Super bowl

Noodles have featured in Chinese, Italian and Arabian cuisines for many hundreds of years, but opinions vary on who used them first. It looks like it may well have been the Chinese: they had them 4,000 years ago. A sample of noodles made from ground millet has been found in an earthenware bowl in the Late Neolithic archaeological site of Lajia in northwestern China.