We've all eaten noodles, but have you heard of noodles from more than 4,000 years ago?
Speaking of noodles, I believe that we are all familiar with it, as a major creative invention in the history of food, it is loved by many people in many regions because of its convenient and fast food characteristics
Many places have food made with noodles, so it can be seen that this noodle is not only delicious, but also has a long history
"Could this be a bowl of noodles?"
"This is old noodles!"
With the exclamations of archaeologists, we turn our attention back to the excavation site of the Lajia site in 2002
On November 22, archaeologist Cai Linhai and his partner led several staff members to the archaeological site to sort out and inventory the cultural relics excavated some time ago
Cai Linhai's mood was very excited, these cultural relics have been placed here since the excavation, have not yet been inspected and counted, and he is also curious about what can be found in them
"Foodies" of four thousand years ago? Suspected noodles "out of the pot"
Under the pressure of excitement, Cai Linhai opened one of the upside-down pottery bowls, and he was surprised to find that there were some pale yellow curly and winding strips in the pottery bowl
He subconsciously uttered the classic remark: "Wouldn't this be a bowl of noodles?" The people next to him quickly watched and were shocked by the possibility of finding noodles
They quickly pulled out their cameras to record the moment, and an experienced old photographer exclaimed, "This is old noodles!" “
Although this discovery is very encouraging, the earliest exact written record of noodles appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty, about 1900 years ago, and if this discovery determines that the strips present in the bowl are noodles, then the earliest history of noodles will be greatly advanced
This made Cai Linhai and others wonder in their hearts, can noodles really be buried in the ground for more than 4,000 years and still be intact? Are these yellowish curls of noodles really noodles?
To understand the above problems, we must first understand the origin of the Lajia ruins, and consider whether the agricultural conditions at that time made noodles possible
Located in Lajia Village, Guanting Town, Minhe County, Qinghai Province, the Lajia Ruins are a large Neolithic settlement site with a history of more than 4,000 years
Since 1999, a joint archaeological team formed by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Qinghai Province has carried out protective excavations of the Lajia site
Due to the large size of the Lajia site, the excavation work continued intermittently for several years, until November 22, 2002, Cai Linhai and others discovered the cultural relics suspected of noodles, which can be said to be of epoch-making significance, and according to the farming conditions at that time, did the residents of the Lajia site have the possibility of making noodles?
We all know that all edible noodles today are basically made from flour from beans or grains
Because these crops contain extremely high gluten protein, excellent ductility and easy molding, it is very suitable as a raw material for making noodles
So, is it not possible to confirm the existence of noodles as long as the seeds of wheat and other soybean cereal crops are found in the Lajia site?
Based on this clue, experts carried out a large-scale search of the excavated Lajia site, but the results were very disappointing, and the experts found only many millet and millet seeds, which we call millet and sorghum today
However, the fruits of these crops do not contain gluten protein, so they do not have the conditions to make molded noodles
This result disappointed the experts, and they had no choice but to abandon this aspect of the investigation and turn to the composition of the yellow curly strips in the pottery bowl, perhaps the ancients used some special craftsmanship to make millet and other crops have the conditions to make shaped noodles! The experts then began to determine the composition
The noodle ingredients become puzzles and make history legends
However, due to the oxidation of the air, most of the curly strips in the pottery bowl have been powdered and fused with the loess, and if the substances present in the loess are generally determined, it is bound to lead to a huge error in the results
So can we only watch this precious evidence "die" out?
Research then stalled, a situation that was not broken until 2004
Lv Houyuan, a researcher at the Cenozoic Geology and Environment Department of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a number of scientists in the industry undertook the separation and identification of noodle strips
They creatively used ultrasonic layered peeling techniques to extract more than two hundred noodle-like fragments from the sediment in the clay bowl.
Subsequently, after careful deliberations, Lü Houyuan and his team decided to use phytosilicar analysis to identify the composition of these strip fragments
What is phytosilicate analysis? In the growth process of many higher plants, the root system will suck a certain amount of soluble silica from the groundwater, and this silica will not be dissolved by the plant, but will settle in the interior or exterior of the plant cells
The particles formed by these silica are very stable, so even if the plant eventually decays in the soil, it will still remain in the soil
The phytosilicates formed by different plants are not the same, so the differences between different plants can be identified through this method
By detecting the presence of phytosilicas in the samples, Lü Houyuan et al. confirmed the possibility that wheat was not present
So are these phytosilicas the same as phytosilicates contained in the millet excavated from the Lajia site? After comparing and measuring the phytosilicas contained in the two samples, the experts found that the two did contain the same ingredients, which are made up of two crops, millet
This identification result confirmed the composition of the curly strips that shimmered with a yellowish luster, and they were indeed "noodles" made by the ancestors of the Lajia site.
Although they did not grow wheat and other legume crops at that time, they still succeeded in making "noodles"
This seems somewhat inconceivable to us today, because crops such as millet are extremely poorly malleable and not conducive to molding, and it is difficult to imagine how the ancestors of that time did all this
This bowl of "noodles" that has been preserved to this day has also become the pioneer of a new era in the history of noodles
In 2005, this major discovery was also published in the British journal Nature, and quickly caused a major response in the world's academic circles, and everyone was shocked by this discovery and deeply lamented the unparalleled wisdom of the ancient ancestors
The discovery of this "bowl of noodles" is not only another major milestone in the process of Chinese historical civilization, but also raises the history of Chinese noodles to the height of four thousand years, which also makes the world begin to recognize one thing: perhaps the birthplace of noodles is in China