The October 25th we celebrate the World Pasta Daya food loved all over the world, and there has long been discussion as to whether this specialty, now associated with our culture and the Mediterranean diet, was invented in Italy or Asia. From the sources at our disposal, we know that pasta was born in China at least 4,000 years ago: a bowl of noodles dated back 2000 years before Christ, while pasta only reached our shores around the year 1000 after Christ.
There dried pastaHowever, it is left to dry in the sun to make it immune to mold and bacteria and available in different formats it is actually an Italian “invention”. which occurred after the Arabs introduced pasta to Sicily around 1100 AD, after discovering it from the Persians who had, in turn, learned about it from the Chinese. However, the myth according to which pasta was brought to Italy by Marco Polo has been debunked: it has been discovered that it was a marketing gimmick carried out by an American magazine in the 1920s.
Pasta was born in China 4,000 years ago
As anticipated, the first tangible proof of the existence of pasta comes from China and it goes back a long way 4,000 years ago: in 2005 a real one was found bowl of noodles – similar to our spaghetti, but made with rice – sealed and upside down, in the archaeological area of Lajia, in northwestern China.
The bowl, buried under three meters of sediment, is considered the oldest discovery comparable to pasta as we know it today. According to what is reported in the study by Professor Haoyuan Lu of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, published in the journal Naturethe origin of the pasta would therefore be Asian, a theory also supported by American archaeological chemists.
The arrival of pasta in Italy and the invention of “dry pasta”
Thanks to some historical sources, including the documentation of the Arab geographer Muhammad-al-Idrisi, we know that, from China, pasta then spread to Japan and Persia, and from Persia he arrived in Arabia.
It was the Arabs themselves who take her to Sicily: pasta “landed” on the Italian coasts shortly after the year 1,000 AD In this period its preparation as dry pasta was refined, also thanks to the warm and sunny climate of our Mediterranean areas. In fact, drying spread rapidly as it made the grain immune to mold and bacteria and allowed the pasta to be transported without difficulty.
At that point, the discussion began to arise about who had invented pasta: if, on the one hand, it is true that its origin dates back toAsia in the form of spaghetti, on the other hand it is also true that today’s form of dried pastawith different formats and lengths, was developed in Italy. During the 12th century, then, the stuffed pastaconsidered “convenient” and tasty because it is able to combine different ingredients and therefore feed more.
But pasta also found its place in literature: when Giovanni Boccaccio wrote the Decameronin the mid-1300s, this food was already famous and widespread. In the third story of the eighth day, Calandrino and the heliotropeit tells of the painter Calandrino, who is deceived by his friends, who tell him of the existence of the town of Bengodi in which they were present delicious macaroni:
In a district called Bengodi (…) there was a mountain of grated Parmesan cheese, on top of which there were people who did nothing other than make macaroni and ravioli, and cook them in capon broth, and then they threw them down, and the more they took, the more they had.
Let’s dispel the myth of pasta introduced in Italy by Marco Polo
For a long time it was believed that pasta was brought to Italy from merchant and traveler Marco Polo, who discovered it in the East and introduced it to our country at the end of the 1200s.
While the origin of pasta is maintained in Asia, it is a story invented by the Americans for marketing: in 1929 it appeared on The New Macaroni Journalofficial magazine of the US National Pasta Association, an article that told of a sailor named Spaghettipart of Marco Polo’s crew, who imported pasta into Italy after discovering it during a trip to Asia. In reality, according to official historical reconstructions, pasta would have arrived in our country around 1100 AD, therefore well before what is reported in this story.
