Noodle Road

Sometimes there is a wonderful story hidden behind small and ordinary things.

A food that's narrow and long like a thread, a noodle is like that.

"Host: Ken Hom"

I am Chef Ken Hom.

From this moment, I will start on a very wonderful journey with you.

Along an unimaginable road, we will find an astonishing cultural mystery hidden in

a bowl of noodles.

Shall we begin?

'Brilliant Creation'

"Shaanxi, China"

Every year in June, the plains of Shaanxi look like it's covered in huge flames.

It's because the farmers set fire to the plains after the wheat harvest.

It's been about 2,000 years since they started growing wheat in China.

With its long history, wheat along with rice has become the staple food for

1.3 billion Chinese people.

Since then, a very original culture was born,

the noodle.

However, this strange food suddenly started showing up not only on Asian

tables but on European tables as well.

Then what mystery is hidden in this?

Who first started creating this thin and long food?

And how can it still fascinate us even after several thousand years?

To find the answer to this question, we first visited a restaurant in Beijing.

Today, there are more than 1,200 different noodle dishes in China.

The variety of noodles is beyond our imagination.

Isn't it unique?

I made a dough with wheat flour and spinach.

After putting on oil,

I stretch it out to make noodles.

To the Chinese, noodles aren't a simple food but a wonderful form of play.

In one word, China is the paradise of noodles.

Then is China the birthplace of noodles?

I decided to climb up the castle of time in order to solve this mystery.

This is the Great Wall of China.

As you can see, it's very difficult to climb.

Stones were brought up this steep mountain to build this great wall.

This Great Wall was built to fend off barbarian invasions.

It was also the symbolic border between civilization and savagery.

Our story begins not on the civilized side but on the far land of savageness.

"Xinjiang Uighurs Autonomous Region"

The northwest end of China. The Xinjiang Uighurs autonomous region

However, this place was the entrance to the Silk Road, the historical bridge

of the Western and Eastern cultures.

From thousands of years ago, people have risked their lives along this road.

"Huoyanshan"

Huoyanshan.

The Chinese people of old believed it was a legendary land full of ghosts.

An astonishing thing of mystery was discovered here during a road

construction in 1991.

The 30 plus holes in the valley of Mt. Huoyanshan.

These 1.5- 2m holes were dug into the ground in precise intervals.

It was the collective tomb of the people who had lived here 2,500 years before.

However, the more surprising item was found inside the tomb.

A mummy of a man in his 40s.

The extremely dry weather had conserved the corpse so well that it was hard to

believe that he had died 2,500 years ago.

"Xijiang Archeological Research Center"

However, the surprise didn't end here.

Archeologists discovered something very interesting among the articles

buried along with the mummy.

It was the food of the people of 2,500 years ago.

Then what did they eat?

The first bowl had grilled lamb.

This is hulled millet.

It still retains its shape and color.

Surprisingly, there was also wheat bread, which was hard to find at the time.

However, what excited the scholars the most was what was in the last bowl.

A thin and long food made of wheat and hulled millet.

It was the moment the most ancient noodle of our time made its appearance.

"Christoph Neidhart Author of (The Noodle)".

"Ishige, Naomichi Japanese National Ethnology Museum"

I believe it to be the ancestor of noodles before technology was developed.

You can consider it the food of mystery.

1,500 years later, this strange food appeared on the other side of the

globe in Europe.

For thousands of years in Europe, a different culture blossomed.

Of course, the culinary culture was very different as well.

For Europeans, whose staple food was wheat, bread was their most important food.

However, around the 10th century,

a totally different wheat food from bread suddenly appeared.

This drawing came from a medieval medical book.

Food that's shaped completely different than that of bread appeared.

A woman is kneading dough.

Another woman is shaping the dough and hanging it on a wooden frame.

Let's take a closer look.

This drawing shows Italian pasta from the medieval times.

How have Italians come to make noodle-shaped foods?

"Sicily, Italy"

This is Sicily in southern Italy.

This is the birthplace of western noodles, pasta.

Spaghetti made of fresh Mediterranean mussel and olive oil is the most

representative pasta in Sicily.

It's said that a true Sicilian eats pasta every day.

Thus it is never missed as a meal.

The amount of pasta consumed by one Sicilian in a year averages 44kg.

It's the highest in the world.

It's 1.5 times more than in other regions and 9 times more than Americans.

What's interesting is that until the 19th century, southern Italy was the only European

Could there be a secret in that?

"Cathedral Palatina"

A clue lies in an old cathedral in Palatina, the capital of Sicily.

There's something interesting on the ceiling of this 11 th century cathedral.

The ceiling is decorated with stalactite shaped ornaments, which are different

from other medieval cathedrals.

The surprising thing is the drawings on the wall.

The subject of the painting is not a Christian but a Muslim with a turban.

Cupico Arab characters are written around the stars.

It's ancient Arabic that is written around all the stars on the ceiling.

Why did the Sicilian people draw a Muslim's face on the cathedral ceiling?

In 827, an army of 10,000 Arab soldiers landed in Sicily.

For the next 200 years, Sicily was governed by the Islamic dynasty of Agra Bead.

What influence did they have on the origin of pasta?

"Bodleian Library Oxford University"

Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

Rare archives on medieval European society are housed in this library.

This travel guidebook, "Unexhausted Merriment", was written by

Idrish, an Arabian geographer under the order of the Sicilian king 800 years ago.

This is a geographic guide for the major cities in Europe, Africa and Asia Minor.

This is a very precious medieval book with only 12 copies left in the world.

Sicily accounts for the largest portion in this book.

What attracts our attention is an article on an item Sicily exported at the time.

He wrote, "The handmade flour food is popular in Travia

and they export Itriya all over the world".

Then what is Itriya?

"Emily Savaga-Smith Oxford University"

This thread-shaped food,

also known as "Itriya" was spreading from Sicily to all over Italy.

Scholars believe this Itriya to be the primitive form of pasta.

They believe it is the origin of Italian pasta,

which has enchanted the palates of the people of the world.

Then what did pasta look like in Italy 800 years ago?

The two women in this drawing may give us the answer to that question.

This noodle is completely handmade and cut with a knife.

After the noodle takes shape, it's hung on wooden frames to dry.

This shows that the pasta of that time was dried noodles.

Through what secret tunnel did this new food called the noodle appear in European kitchens?

"Iran, Ba-am"

The ancient city of Ba'am, Persia.

This fortress in the middle of the desert Kerman state, was the trading

city of the Silk Road, which connected the western and eastern cultures.

This city used to bustle so much with caravan merchants who traveled to Europe

and Asia that it was called, "The emerald of the desert".

These merchants did not only transport silk to Europe.

Experts assert that Asian foods like Itriya were transported through the

kitchens of these oasis cities to the tables in Europe.

The Silk Road was also a noodle road.

Evidence of the Itriya still remains in the Iranian dish called "Reshte".

"Reshte" means thread in Farsi.

The Reshte is a noodle dish that's eaten before leaving on a long journey.

Reshte is dried as it was done in Sicily 800 years ago.

Noodles connected the West and East through an invisible cultural passage.

A great amount of time was necessary for the noodle to be born.

Wheat was cultivated for the first time in Mesopotamia in 7,000 BC.

And bread was first made only around 4,000 BC.

It was shaped flat.

Egyptians started baking leavened bread from around 3,000 BC.

And that's how the bread that we eat now started.

At the same time, the Chinese started to cultivate wheat.

It was only 1,000 years later that the Chinese started eating wheat.

It's 2,000 years after that during the Han Dynasty

that the first record of noodles can be found.

This is Xinjiang, where the noodle mummy was first found.

Then who was the creator of the noodle?

The clue to this question lies behind this mask, which was discovered in

the Shaohuh tomb in the Xinjiang desert.

Where did the owner of this mask come from?

And where has he gone after leaving the tomb in the middle of the desert?

Why did he make this strange mask with the large nose?

A surprising truth was discovered through a DNA test recently.

"Li Wenying Xinjiang Archeological Research Center"

On the whole, it's the large nose that stands out.

Scientists believe the tombs to be those of ancient Europeans.

About 5,000 years ago,

a large migration from the West to Central Asia began.

They were Caucasian nomads moving in search of green prairies.

At one time, they lived on the Ukrainian prairie or Siberia, however, with the

increase of their population, they started looking for a wider area.

The first immigrants to Xinjiang continued their nomadic life by

breeding lambs, goats and horses.

However, they gradually settled down and started to farm.

However, how was a nomadic life and farming possible in a desert land?

This is a Huyanglin, which can be found throughout the desert of Xijiang.

The trees that had dried up thousands of years ago stand like tombstones.

The Huyanglin is like a tombstone left by nature as evidence of fertile land.

In this valley, the temperature rises to 50C on a summer day.

However, there are records that show a river ran into the dry area of Xinjiang

until the 19th century.

According to scholars, when the European tribes came in search of a new

prairie, this area had a river running through with trees and grass.

Thanks to this rich natural environment, the nomads were able to settle

down here and farm.

The only thing they cultivated was wheat.

These European nomads brought wheat from the birthplace of Mesopotamian

civilization, Iran and Iraq.

Further, this wheat became the ingredient for the first noodle.

This is the Subesi remains where the first noodle relic was found.

"Lu Enguo Xinjiang Archeological Research Center"

This house that was discovered in 1992 is a two-room house.

There is a heated floor while the stove is in the front.

The room on the west side was a stable.