When you sit down to enjoy a plate of your favorite pasta, have you ever wondered when people started eating this stuff? They say that the Chinese invented spaghetti and Marco Polo brought it back to Italy, but how long ago did they invent it and how do we know that some other race didn't have something similar? Well I decided to research this question and the answer I got surprised me. Some historians state that according to the Book of Roger, a medieval manuscript, spaghetti was invented in Sicily about 850 years ago. What was the stuff that Marco Polo brought back from China? Well it is believed that it was a type of noodle made from rice flour. Apparently Sicilians had been eating spaghetti at least a couple of hundred years prior to his trip. The Sicilians had a completely different variety of durum wheat than the Chinese, which enabled them to create what we consider the modern plate of spaghetti.

What about that refreshing cold glass of brew, how long have people been enjoying that? We know that the ancient Egyptians brewed a drink that was very similar to modern beer. Beer was called hqt in Egypt and Zythus by the ancient Greeks. Beer was thought of differently in ancient Egypt and was also given to children. Sometimes people's wages were paid to them in beer. The Egyptians thought so much of beer, that they would sometimes place beer in tombs so that it could be enjoyed in the afterlife. The Egyptians would drink beer all day long, from the time that they got up to when they went to bed. Sometimes a little wine would would also be consumed. I guess this made the task of working so hard to build the pyramids a little easier. Some believe that the beer that was developed in Europe didn't descend from the more ancient brews, but that it was developed independently.

I guess that most of us know that one of the oldest crops is rice. There is archaeological evidence of rice farming that dates back to 5000 B.C. We are talking about over 7,000 years ago and it was found in China. Rice was not eaten in all of ancient China, because it wouldn't grow in Northern China. What did the ancient people that lived in that region eat? They were eating millet and sorghum and if history is correct, they learned how to plant these crops around 4,500 B.C., so they didn't have to try and find them growing wild anymore. Millet is a type of grain. The advantage of eating it in the early times was that it grew wild all over Asia and Africa. It was easy to spot, because the stalks grow up to 15 feet tall. Another advantage of eating millet and this is an extremely important one, is that it will keep for up to 5 years without going bad. You can imagine how important this was to a society that had no way to refrigerate food. Sorghum is a grain that grew wild in Africa and Asia and this led to it being frequently consumed.

The ancient Greeks had a different idea about meat than we have today. It is said that they would never eat a a piece of meat, unless it had been sacrificed to the gods, or had been hunted in the wild. They had this belief that you shouldn't kill and eat a tame domesticated animal unless it was a sacrifice. The main diet of the ancient Greeks was usually wheat, which sometimes had barley or millet substituted for it. They also consumed wine and olive oil. They did grow some vegetables and ate a lot of fish. Because of their feelings about meat, they probably didn't eat it very much.

Food was tough to buy in Babylon. The average laborer received a salary of about $3.00 to $4.50 per year. I know that money was worth a lot more then, but that still was almost nothing. They ate grain and when they could get it, dried fish. The grain would have to be ground by the person preparing the meal. It would be made into round cakes and seasoned with dates or other fruit when available. The drink that would be consumed with it, would be beer or wine. Yes the Babylonians also had beer. Beer seemed to have appeared almost everywhere in the ancient world. This has nothing to do with food, but I just thought that I would mention it. The early Babylonians were shaven and didn't sport those long beards that you see when Babylonians are depicted, that style came along later after the ruler Sargon.

The Maya had an interesting diet. The three essential foods that they ate were corn, beans and squash. Somehow the ancient Maya knew how to prepare corn so that they would get the most nutrients out of it. They dried the kernels and removed them. Next they soaked them in water and lime. This removed the casings and exposed the amino acids and nutrients. The next thing that they did was grind up the corn and make tortillas. They would take beans, crush them and put them into a rolled up tortillas. When it came to the squash, they ate every part. They even roasted the seeds and ate them as a snack. They used chilies to spice up the beans. When they could get them, they ate avocado, papaya, guava and breadnut. They learned how to cultivate these crops. Turkey was the meat that the ancient Maya ate most often. They also ate many different types of wild animals, but meat was not the main part of their diet.

Lastly let's go back further in time to see what Neanderthals ate. We believe that fish was a food that they consumed. Evidence of this has been found at Neanderthal sites. With the fish bones, fish hooks and nets were found. It turns out that the people were not as stupid as many people thought. They built traps to catch wild animals, which they could eat. Bows and arrows were found at Neanderthal sites, along with poisons for the arrow tips. This made hunting easier, because you didn't necessarily need to hit a vital organ with the arrow, piercing the skin of the animal with a poisoned arrow would bring him down. This was much more efficient and meant that they could provide the quota of food needed. It turns out that Neanderthals were not all that different from us.