The way humans eat, the most popular in the world are three kinds: with fingers, with forks, with chopsticks. People who use their fingers to eat live in many parts of Africa, the Middle East, Indonesia, and the Indian subcontinent. People with forks are mainly distributed in Europe and North and South America, and people with chopsticks are mainly distributed in East Asia. The Chinese are the main body of the chopsticks group and the maker of chopsticks.
Chopsticks originated in China, and ancient times called 箸 (箸,助助, meaning a tool to help eat), also called 筯. Because of the homonym of "箸" and "住", "staying" has the meaning of stopping, but it is an unlucky language. Therefore, it is called "Chopsticks" instead. This is the origin of the name of the chopsticks.
When were the chopsticks invented?
Who invented the chopsticks? We have no time to test it. "Book of Rites" Zheng Xuan notes cloud: "By the soil, the cannon and eat it." It is said that the ancestors wrapped the millet with leaves, paste the mud and then put it in the fire. A simpler method is to put the grain into the fire ash and use the branches to move from time to time so that the grain is evenly heated and then eaten. Perhaps it is inspired by this process, and a branch gradually becomes two. The branches were replaced by bamboo and the original chopsticks appeared.
The earliest chopsticks found in China are copper chopsticks unearthed from Yinxu, Anyang City, Henan Province. The chopsticks were called 箸, and the king was the first king to use ivory. Sima Qian is in the "Historical Records of the Zongweizi Family": "Yu is a symbol, and the scorpion sighs: He is a symbol, he will be a jade cup; for a jade cup, he will think of the distant things and treasures." Since the beginning of the palace, it has not been able to vibrate." Although this is a statement that the king’s life is extravagant and caused fear of the courtiers, it provides the most from the court incident caused by the ivory. Valuable textual history. As the monarch of the late Shang Dynasty, it is estimated that China has produced refined ivory 3,000 years ago.
The Chinese used the knife and fork first, not the chopsticks.
In fact, in the beginning, our Chinese ancestors used forks and knives instead of chopsticks. The knife and fork were invented by Chinese people.
The earliest bone tableware found in the world is now in Hemudu, Zhejiang, China, dating back 7000 years. As you can imagine, the people of the Neolithic Age still lived a life of blood and blood. The best tool for dealing with meat is, of course, a knife, so the clever Chinese ancients used the knife first in the diet.
However, at the time, the tools used on the table were called "匕". The dagger used by modern people was originally used for eating. Look at the bronze enamel unearthed below, which has two practical functions: one is equivalent to a spoon, and the other is equivalent to a knife.
In the pre-Qin period, this "匕" actually evolved from the knife. Later, with the development of the food culture, the two functions were separated, forming a knife and a spoon. “匕” later represented only the spoon, which was also introduced into food and delicious in ancient times. We used to call the mother who died, "妣", and the "妣" in the Oracle bones is "匕", which represents the mother who cooks.
The cutlery knife is the oldest cutlery in human history, followed by the fork of the cutlery. Some bone forks have been found in the Qijia cultural sites in the northwest of China, at least 4,000 years ago. When they were unearthed, they were together, indicating that they were used in sets. In the Shang Dynasty, the fork became two teeth and it was small. It is the same as the spoon and the bone knife, indicating that the fork, spoon, and knife are three pieces. There are also excavated cutlery in some of the ruins and tombs of the Shang Dynasty in China, which indicates that the cutlery is the main tableware used by people in the Shang Dynasty.
Later, more than 50 pieces of copper knives and copper forks were unearthed in a tomb of the Warring States in Luoyang, indicating that the Warring States also used knives and forks. Gansu Jiuquan unearthed the Eastern Han copper fork, Guangdong unearthed Dongjin iron fork, Gansu County, unearthed from the Yuan Dynasty fork knife, and also unearthed in Shandong Jiaxiang knife and fork, there is a bamboo sheath dedicated to the knife and fork. This shows that the use of the knife and fork continued until the Song and Yuan Dynasties.