Pasta

The origins of pasta in Italy have been hotly debated for years. Some sources still adhere to the popular story of Marco Polo returning from China in the thirteenth century with his discovery of noodles. Other historians have argued that pasta originated in Italy with the Etruscans, a race of people who predated the Romans and lived in central Italy. (This theory was supported by murals at Caere, an ancient Etruscan city about thirty miles north of Rome and dating back to about the fourth century, that show tools that look very like modern tools for making pasta.)