“Oldest” noodles found in China
This BBC story relates that archaeologists excvating China’s Lajia site have found the oldest noodles ever found, and they are touting this as proof that the Chinese invented noodles.
Now, listen, I’m not going to argue whether the Chinese invented noodles; they probably did. But there’s something about archaeology that I find utterly idiotic. And the funny part is that archaeologists are the ones always explaining this point to us. Here it is:
Most stuff from the past has disappeared!
Let me restate that point in a different way: the only stuff that archaeologists get to look at is a very few relics that didn’t happen to get destroyed by fire, or war, or just erosion because they were left out in the open. Archaeologists only get to look at very special cases where stuff was for some reason preserved.
So right away, this BBC article’s headline is idiotic: “Oldest noodles found in China”. I’m pretty sure - no, completely positive - that these noodles are not the oldest noodles. Secondly, the researcher, Professor Houyuan Lu, was quoted in the article as saying, “Our discovery indicates that noodles were first produced in China”.
I don’t see how that’s the case…when most of the empirical evidence about noodles was…uhh…eaten! Again, I’m not disputing that the Chinese invented noodles; it’s a perfectly logical assumption. It’s just that finding these noodles does not prove - nor does it even “indicate” - anything, except that they found some very old noodles in China.
So my question is this…why don’t archaeologists - who are supposed to be scientists - say the truth? What truth is that? That they really don’t know much of anything about much of anything, except that they have found a lot of old stuff.
Period.