A cup-o-noodles from the past.

• Position: LEFTOVERS

Thousands of years before there was fettucine Alfredo, spaghetti, or Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, someone living near me Yellow rover in northwestern China was eating a bowl of noodles. The meat was interrupted, most likely by a catastrophic flood. The up-ended bowl. remained sealed with sediment until. October, when a Chinese research team unearthed it. According to Houyuan Lu of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing, the clump of noodles found inside the bowl is 4,000 years old.

The thin, yellow strands are the earliest physical, evidence of noodles ever found. They resemble traditional Chinese La-Mian...