The Chinese did it

Here's an excerpt of a column by Dr Karl S Kruszelnicki, on The Age magazine... (dated 5 Nov. 2005)

"The first known noodles date from about 2000 BC and were discovered last month by a team of archeologists in an area known as Lajia on the upper reaches of the Yellow River in north-western China....the prehistoric bowl of noodles was found, upside down, under three metres of floodplain sediment. Dr Houyuan Lu, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, wrote of the discovery 'The noodles were thin (about 0.3 centimetres in diameter), delicate, more than 50 centimetres in length and yellow in colour. They resemble the La-Mian noodle, a traditional noodle that is made by repeatedly pulling and stretching the dough by hand. "

The Italians, on the other hand, did not use or make pasta until Marco Polo made his trip to China. The earliest mention of pasta, according to Karl, is in Boccaccio's Decameron, written in 1353.

"In the region called Bengodi, where they tie the vines with sausages, there is a mountain made of grated parmesan cheese on which men work all day making macaroni and ravioli, boiling them in a capon broth"

So who made the first pasta? Karl says it's the Chinese.

But now my curiousity is piqued... tying vines with sausages?!!! Must read Decameron.