# Italians or Chinese? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 22, 2003, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844 "2003-02-22T22:35:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![techchick68](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea5d25/32.png) [@techchick68](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/techchick68)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2003, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/1 "2003-02-22T22:35:40Z")
I looked in the archives and couldn’t find an answer. Who was first to create and eat noodles/pasta, the Italians or the Chinese? Also, what kind of flour do the Chinese use? I think I know that Italian pasta (“authentic”) uses semolina but I would assume that would vary from region to region based on local food crops. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2003, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/2 "2003-02-22T22:38:29Z")
> [@](#): > > Q. Who “invented” pasta? > > A. Popular legend has it that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy following his exploration of the Far East in the late 13th century; however, we can trace pasta back as far as the fourth century B.C., where an Etruscan tomb showed a group of natives making what appears to be pasta. The Chinese were making a noodle-like food as early as 3000 B.C. And Greek mythology suggests that the Greek God Vulcan invented a device that made strings of dough (the first spaghetti!). From [this site.](http://www.ilovepasta.org/faqs.html#Q3) ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2003, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/3 "2003-02-22T22:59:23Z")
The possibility of the ancient Romans (and Etruscans) knowing about pasta has been discussed in two threads in Comments on Cecil’s Columns: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=136445](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=136445) [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141636](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141636) ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2003, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/4 "2003-02-22T23:28:49Z")
Chinese noodles can be made from wheat flour or from rice flour. Chinese cuisine from the southern part of the country (where rice is grown) is more rice-based. In the north, where its too cold and dry for rice, noodles made from wheat take over the role filled by rice in the south. ---
**Author:** ![techchick68](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea5d25/32.png) [@techchick68](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/techchick68)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2003, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/5 "2003-02-22T23:45:34Z")
Cool, thanks. So if I am reading all this correctly, there is no “true” answer but believed to be the Romans based on artifacts… I wonder how the Chinese created it? This is not clear to me. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/6 "2003-02-23T03:43:04Z")
Why would you say it’s the Romans, techchick68, since the quote that Q.E.D. gives says that the Chinese knew it from at least 3000 B.C., while the Romans knew it from at least 400 B.C. In any case, pasta has been known for long enough that there’s no way to be sure where it developed. It could have been anywhere between Italy and China. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/7 "2003-02-23T06:01:10Z")
> [@](#): > > And Greek mythology suggests that the Greek God Vulcan invented a device (…) More or less off-topic, but it annoys me to no end when people get their deities confused. **Vulcan** is a Roman god. **Hephaistos** is Greek. To steer somewhat back on topic [this site](http://www.inmamaskitchen.com/FOOD_IS_ART/pasta/historypasta.html) has this to say: > [@](#): > > The Internet abounds with assertions that Greek mythology proves that the ‘Greek God, Vulcan,’ invented a device that made “strings of dough.” Vulcan was a Roman god, not Greek, one who was associated with volcanoes and the fiery forge, and his Greek counterpart was Hephaestus. Nowhere in the works of the Greek writer, Homer, or the Roman, Ovid, is there mention of anything forged by Hephaestus or Vulcan other than armor, jewelry, and the fragile threads that trapped Venus and Mars in their lovemaking. ---
**Author:** ![Hemlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Hemlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hemlock)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/8 "2003-02-23T13:03:24Z")
Ever since humans started to grow and mill cereal crops they must have devised better ways to store their produce. Granaries are one way, but pasta/noodles probably lasts even longer than raw grain. Isn’t it likely that the idea was developed independently in various places - Chinese noodles, Italian spaghetti, N African cous-cous, etc - or it goes so far back (like the growing of cereals) that it’s irellevant. Now, back to my noodles/beef/kimchee dinner… ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/9 "2003-02-24T00:40:27Z")
In her _Did Marco Polo go to China ?_ (Secker and Warburg, 1995), Francis Wood’s take on the subject is: > [@](#): > > … Arab influence seems to be responsible both for Chinese noodles and Italian pasta. > Wheat, ground into flour and without the addition of yeast and other raising agents, lends itself to the production of both pasta and noodles. It was the occuption of Sicily in 827 by an Arab army that brought hard durum wheat to Italy. East to grow but difficult to mill, it is the main ingredient of pasta. Durum wheat pasta then gradually spread northwards throughout Italy. Just as Persian vocabulary is widely used in the _Description of the World_, the vocabulary of the Arabs in Scicily is commemorated in a type of thin spagetti still known by the old Arabic name, _itriya_. Curiously, despite the demonstrated introduction and northwards movement, there seems to have been a seperate Genoese (not Venetian, alas) tradition of pasta-making, which also owed a great deal to Arab influence. Small lasagne-like squares of pasta are called _mandili di sea_ or ‘silk handerchiefs’, _mandil_ being the Arab word for a handkerchief, and in Genoa, linguini are known as _tria_, another Arabic word. > Noodles and _jiaozi_, the very similar dishes eaten in north China, all also made from durum wheat flour, and are likewise thought to be the result of Arab influence via Central Asia. The durum wheat used for Chinese noodles and _jiaozi_ is thought to have originated in Western Asia. She goes on to discuss the origins of ravioli. Wood’s bias in the matter is expliciately strong, but she does seem to have a command of the details. (FWIW, I’ve heard her personally admit she’s not entirely sure of the thrust of her primary case in the work I’m citing; which is to her credit. I don’t buy it myself.) ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/10 "2003-02-24T03:55:13Z")
Here’s some info about [url=http://web.utk.edu/~bcannon/the origin of wheat. It seems impossible to show any “Arabic influence” from that alone. BTW, if Marco Polo didn’t go to China, it’s pretty hard to imagine why he got his name in the official history. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/11 "2003-02-24T20:46:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \* > Here’s some info about [the origin of wheat](http://web.utk.edu/~bcannon). It seems impossible to show any “Arabic influence” from that alone. While [that site](http://web.utk.edu/~bcannon) and its links are nice references about wheat in general, as far as I can see, none of them specificially discuss the historical spread of **durum** wheat, which is what Wood is talking about. [This page on the history of macaroni](http://www.cliffordawright.com/history/mac_print.html) was the most thorough source I could find on the net about the arrival of durum in Italy. From what I can see, it agrees with her, at least as regards the Italian end of the issue. (I haven’t read it all; it contains far more about macaroni than someone who grew up in Seventies Scotland and to whom macaroni is indeliably glop out a can as a result could possibly want to know.) For the record, Wood isn’t pretending to be a food historian - she’s head of the Chinese collections in the British Library - and her reference is Claudia Roden’s _The Food of Italy_ from 1989. > [@](#): > > BTW, if Marco Polo didn’t go to China, it’s pretty hard to imagine why he got his name in the official history. In her argument, by exactly the same means that other historians think he did: Rustichello was a good writer and the pair of them wrote an entertaining work, which was of great interest to their medieval contemporaries and successors. Where she differs is that she suggests that Marco had enough access to information about China from his father and uncle, who had gone at least once, and Arabic traders in the Black Sea region to pretend he’d been. As I’ve already indicated, I don’t find this overall thesis convincing. John Larner’s _Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World_ (Yale, 1999) both argues against Wood (p60-3) and provides an excellent account of the reception and influence of _Il Milione_. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2003, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/12 "2003-02-25T05:08:18Z")
I meant the official Chinese history. Afterall, Marco Polo was supposed to have spent 13 years in the courts of Kublai Khan. Something like that. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2003, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/13 "2003-02-25T05:10:11Z")
I also found the argument by spread of the durum wheat a very weak one. Just because people making noodles and other stuff with durum wheat now doesn’t mean they didn’t start with some other form of wheat. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2003, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/14 "2003-02-25T09:12:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \* > I meant the official Chinese history. You may be thinking of Pauthier’s old claim to have identified a Polo in Chinese records, but the individual in question is now believed to have been a Mongol. There are no known references to the Polos in Chinese records, though it’s obviously impossible to say that there are none yet to be found. See Larner p31 (and p199) or Wood p135-6. As for the durum argument, it’s clearly an issue of definition. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2003, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/15 "2003-02-25T14:21:06Z")
[Tony Soprano] Why would people who eat with sticks invent something you need a fork to eat? [/Tony Soprano] ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2003, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/italians-or-chinese/156844/16 "2003-02-25T14:58:28Z")
It’s kinda like who invented fire. Parallel discoveries is pretty likely.