2005年NPR美国国家公共电台九月-Neolithic Noodles Unearthed in China

From NPR news, this is All Things Considered, I am Michelle Norris. Italians like to think they made the first noodles. But the Chinese maintain they invented the dish about 2000 years ago. And Arab cooks argue that the honor belongs to them. Well now scientists have weighed in. A team of archeologists at a site in northwest China turned up a bowl of noodles that was prepared in the Stone Age. NPR s Jon Hamilton has details.

About 4, 000 years ago, someone in the village of Lajia along the Yellow River was apparently 1 getting ready to eat a bowl of noodles. Then a massive earthquake hit. Kam-biu Liu of Louisiana State University explains what happened next.

The bowl of noodles was dropped and overturned with the noodles inside, and then the bottom of the overturned bowl was then sealed by the layer of flood sediment 2.

Liu says that's because the massive earthquake triggered an equally massive flood. The village of Lajia was entombed in silt 3 and debris 4. Ok, skip forward a few thousand years. Archeologists have discovered the ancient buried village of Lajia, and are sifting 5 through the ruins. Liu says that after digging down through about 10 feet of silt and clay, they uncover something that looks like an overturned bowl.

They turn/ it over, you know expecting that there is anything inside, but then they're, after they open/ or remove/ this overturned bowl they found the noodles. What is amazing about it is that, it almost looked as if, you know, this is a fresh bowl of noodles, almost looked like, you know it is edible 6.

The clay has created an airtight seal that preserved the neolithic 7 noodles for 4000 years. The noodles turned to powders soon after being uncovered, but not before archeologist took a picture. Gary Crawford is an anthropologist 8 at University of Toronto at Mississauga. He says this discovery defied all odds 9.

It's exciting, because noodles just shouldn't be preserved at archeological sites. They're really quite delicate. Crawford says the find reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature also confirms that ancient cultures were quite sophisticated when it came to processing foods.

We know that they've been steaming food for a long time, because we find ceramic 10 steamers at sites this old or even older. And so we just assumed they were maybe boiling grain, making porridges or something. But now this adds another dimension to what they were cooking.

It required the technique that's still used by Chinese cooks today. At the Chinatown Express restaurant in Washington D. C. , a chef works behind the window facing the sidewalk. He kneads and twists a slab 11 of dough 12, stretches it into a thick rope about 4 feet long, and folds the rope in half so as to make two thinner strands 13 . Then he stretches them. Soon there are dozens of strands thin enough to send to the kitchen on a plastic tray. These neo-noodles are made from wheat. Laboratory test shows that the paleo-noodles found in China were made from millet 14. But they are still noodles. And Gary Crawford says this discovery may help settle the debate about who invented this culinary classic.

Well I have always been on the side of China (of) being the originator of noodles, so this sure lends support to that / argument.

The woman behind the counter of Chinatown Express sees pretty underwhelmed though. She says she's always assumed that Chinese noodles hadn't changed much since the Stone Age.

Unless they're fried, it's same thing, same thing that I make here. It's just in the style, only different in style,only different in style, maybe someone do them fat, more skinny, you know.

She is more impressed that the pre-historical noodles survive so long. Here hand-made noodles rarely last more than a few minutes. Jon. Hamilton, NPR News.

To see a picture of the ancient noodles, go to our website: NPR. org.