Gunpowder spread to Middle East first, pasta was already being made in Ancient Rome at the very least, and lots of, if not most of "Chinese food" is Chinese-in-name-only.
It is vanishingly unlikely pasta was invented in Ancient Rome. China had been trading with the West since the earliest possible founding of Rome, at the latest. American-Chinese cuisine was invented by Chinese in America, and I doubt any Romans tasted it, ancient or otherwise, but it is possible there was some Ancient Roman analog, but don't confuse who invented with who consumed: a culturally Chinese cook in ancient Rome is not Roman (though not logically impossible, there could have been a Chinese Roman citizen, but I strongly doubt there were any).
- Chinese noodles and Italian pasta have nothing in common save for the shape of some variants.
- Mixing water, flour and egg yolk isn't exactly a massive qualitative leap from simply having flour around.
- Spice were carried over long distances in the ancient world because of their high value density. Food wasn't. Nobody was shipping around noodles. It's still inefficient enough that all process foods are more or less locally made
now.
And finally, I don't understand why you're hypothesizing that Roman pasta would have necessarily been related to Chinese people in Rome. It makes absolutely no sense.
> Chinese noodles and Italian pasta have nothing in common save for the shape of some variants.
While Chinese noodles may be made of rice or wheat flour and Italian pasta is made of wheat flour, the noodles, regardless of what material they're made of, are indeed made in more or less the same way. And indeed, as you have left it, insisting they have nothing in common does not change that it's entirely unsupportable. That the earliest evidence of Italian pasta around the 4th century BC postdates the earliest evidence of China trading with the West, which predates Rome's founding, it is clear when taken in context of the earliest evidence of Chinese noodles around the 4th millennium BC that the recipe for noodles migrated to the West. While it is possible some intrepid Roman chef independently divined the magical process of inducing noodles from wheat flour coincidentally right around the time of the earliest evidence of Chinese trade with the West, it is slightly more complicated than the recipe, a staple of Chinese cuisine for maybe 3500 years by then, being passed along with silk, tea and ivory by traders.
I am completely flummoxed that you can't seem to grasp this, that not only did Romans not invent pasta, they could not possibly have ever made or even tasted pasta sauce, as Christopher Columbus hadn't yet been born when the last Roman died, nor could he have invented the tomato before 1492. Italy basically imported everything, invented nothing, even the Romans themselves were imported and stole most of the innovations attributed to them from the Etruscans, themselves having migrated from S. Turkey, and who the Romans pretty much wiped out within a few hundred years. Italians like to trace their roots in a flattering way because Rome happens to be there, but I don't think there were any Italians before 1946.
By your logic the Jomon culture imported the knowledge of ceramics from Moravia because the Venus of Dolní Věstonice predates the Jomon culture. I'm not quite sure this is how it works.
> they could not possibly have ever made or even tasted pasta sauce, as Christopher Columbus hadn't yet been born when the last Roman died, nor could he have invented the tomato before 1492
You seem to have a penchant for continuously shifting goalposts. What does sauce to have with this?
> It is vanishingly unlikely pasta was invented in Ancient Rome
I never said it was. It's just that by then, it had already been known in Europe. So it certainly wasn't an import from China.
> American-Chinese cuisine was invented by Chinese in America, and I doubt any Romans tasted it, ancient or otherwise, but it is possible there was some Ancient Roman analog
What do these two things have to do with each other? Why are you mixing Roman pasta and Chinese cuisine? I merely juxtaposed them in a list of claims, beyond that they have nothing in common.
This may surprise you, but American Chinese food is not served in China, or a Chinese dish, but actually an invention based on American food that people associate with the Chinese.
Thanks, that is quite interesting, but I was already aware. So let's not confuse which culture invents with which culture consumes. Also should add the stirrup, paper, hand guns, and using petroleum as fuel. I wonder if any of these IP thefts could be successfully litigated, and if so, what the result would be.
