Not Just Noodles

A short article on newkarala.com tells the world about the latest Chinese archaeological discovery:  a pot containing remains of beef soup or beef stew.   The article, which is dated December 15, 2016, may be read here.  It makes for particularly interesting reading in light of the earlier archaeological discovery of a noodle bowl whose contents resemble modern lo mein or perhaps dandan noodles.

The pot's contents are known to have contained beef because beef bones are among what was found inside.  Archaeologists are studying the find, which came from ruins that are approximately 2,000 years old.   Unfortunately, though photographs of the item have been posted on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, there were none with this news article.

Finds like this are exciting because they help provide information that will eventually help us reconstruct the early history of cooking.  

Ancient Noodles

How far back in time do noodles go?

A recent archaeological discovery in China pushes the origins of noodles far before the Middle Ages. A National Geographic article reports that a sealed, overturned bowl containing noodles was found below three feet of sediment at the Lajia site in northwestern China.   The contents are estimated to be 4,000 years old. 

A good picture of the noodles may be found here. They look surprisingly like the noodles you might be served in any dish of lo mein at any modern Chinese food restaurant anywhere in the world. The noodles have been analyzed and were found to be made, not from wheat flour, or rice flour, but from two different kinds of millet, the original staple grain of that part of the world.

So the next time you eat noodles, whether as spaghetti, lo mein, or ramen soup, think about how long human beings have been eating similar foods.

Ancient Soup

I found an interesting little article today about a curious archaeological discovery--a bowl of soup that is more than 2,000 years old, and is still liquid. The article may be found here.

The soup was found in a Chinese warrior's grave dated to the Warring States period (475 BCE to 221BCE), in a sealed three-legged bronze pot that likely had been used as a cooking pot. The tomb also contained a  sealed bottle, believed to be wine, that was also still liquid. The soup has been sent off to a laboratory for analysis.

Surprisingly, the article mentions that this pot is not the earliest soup found in a Chinese tomb. Another pot, this one believed to be about 4,000 years old, "containing noodles was found in 2005 at a site near the Yellow River."

I have long been accustomed to the idea that an immense amount of information about material culture in the past may be gleaned through archaeology, particularly about costume and architecture. But I tend to forget that archaeology can also teach us about ancient food.