Dayu is the legendary first person to use chopsticks in China. There is a folk legend in Northeast my country. It is said that Dayu did not enter the house three times when he was dealing with floods. Eat, then set off on your way.

But the soup was boiling and couldn't be eaten, so he broke off branches and stuffed it with meat or rice flour. This was the first prototype of chopsticks.

Although the legend is not official history, chopsticks were born due to luck because cooked food was hot to the touch. This is in line with the laws of human life development.

"Book of Rites" Zheng notes that "coat living things with soil and then eat them with cannons."

This is to wrap millet in leaves, paste it in mud and roast it in the fire.

Some experts believe that this grilling method also promoted the formation of chopsticks.

When the ancestors roasted the grains coated with mud in the ashes of the fire, they constantly stirred them with branches in order to make them ripen evenly. Our wise ancestors were inspired by the process of stirring primitive popcorn. Over time,

The prototype of chopsticks also gradually appeared in the hands of ancestors.

This is of course speculation, because there was no written language at the end of the Neolithic Age and the period of Xia and Yu, and it was impossible to record the invention of chopsticks at that time. However, these speculations by dietary experts are not without scientific reason.

"Han Feizi Yu Lao" calls chopsticks "箸", which once again proves that chopsticks were originally made of wood and bamboo.

Because there are many trees in the north and bamboo in the south, our ancestors used local materials. Therefore, bamboo is the most primitive raw material for chopsticks in our country.

Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" of the Han Dynasty said: "The sound of chopsticks is made from bamboo." The ancients said: "The chopsticks are used for carrying" and they are carried from wood. This is another circumstantial evidence that the ancestors first used thin tree poles or bamboos as food.

tool.

However, it is a long time of hundreds of years or even longer to use branches and thin bamboos to scoop hot food from clay pots to the formation of chopsticks.

The history of mankind is a history of evolution. As food and cooking methods improve, their eating utensils also continue to develop.

In primitive society, everyone ate with their hands. In the Neolithic Age, our ancestors mostly used the steaming method to eat. The staple food rice and beans were boiled into porridge, and the non-staple food vegetables and meat were boiled into juicy soup.

It is very inconvenient to pick up vegetables and meat with a spoon, but it is very convenient to use chopsticks to pick up vegetable leaves. Therefore, "Book of Rites·Quli" says, "If there are vegetables in the soup, use it, and if there are no vegetables, you don't need to use it." Note by Zheng Xuan

"Kai, just like chopsticks." It can be seen that in the Neolithic Age, soup was a secondary mainstream. It was extremely inconvenient to use a spoon for eating soup. It was even more impossible to grasp the hot and thin soup with hands, so chopsticks became the most ideal

tableware.

All in all, the appearance of chopsticks is not isolated.

As far back as the middle of the Neolithic Age, daggers and keys have been discovered in the Yangshao Cultural Site.

When history advanced to the late Neolithic Age, human wisdom had developed to a certain extent and living conditions had improved. Eating with daggers and spoons alone could no longer adapt to the evolution of cooking, so chopsticks followed the trend and appeared.

However, in the Xia Dynasty four thousand years ago, chopsticks were still in their infancy. After hundreds of years of continuous evolution, by the Shang and Tang Dynasties, they gradually formed two small sticks of the same length, longer than the tiger's mouth.

Then it developed to the end of the Shang Dynasty. In order to satisfy the luxurious and noble life needs of his king, Zhou ordered the hunting of elephants to saw their teeth and make elephant chopsticks.

Since there is no record of the birth of chopsticks, we can only trace the birth of chopsticks based on various inferences and circumstantial evidence from some experts. However, we believe that the emergence of chopsticks is the inevitable result of historical deduction.