If you stepped into a time machine and landed in ancient Rome or Egypt, you’d find something familiar: your food! That’s because some of the most popular foods today were already on the menu thousands of years ago. Here are 10 of them with deep historical roots.
10. Pasta (Dumpling Style)
Think pasta started in Italy? As it turns out, people were already boiling dough way before spaghetti became popular. Around 2000 BC, noodle-like dumplings existed in China. Meanwhile, ancient Romans made a dish called “lagana” in the 1st century AD. It wasn’t quite spaghetti, but it was an early version of pasta.
9. Soda
That’s right, carbonated drinks have deep roots and it traces back to ancient Greeks and Romans who enjoyed naturally carbonated mineral springs. Then in 1700s, Joseph Priestley invented drinkable carbonated water, while J. J. Schweppe bottled it and launched the first soft drink brand. In the 1800s, American pharmacists mixed herbs, fruit syrups, and carbonated water in soda fountain, which also led to the birth of Coca-Cola.
8. Honey
Here’s a sweet shocker: honey’s history goes back tens of thousands of years. Cave paintings in Spain dated to about 8000 BC depict honey gathering. Additionally, ancient Egyptians were known to worship bees and include honey in tomb offerings, while Chinese dynasties used it as a medicine thousands of years ago. Today, we add honey to tea, marinades, and more—a spoonful of it connecting us to prehistoric gatherers!
7. Olive Oil
Olive oil is ancient too and it’s part of a tradition that’s over 6,000 years old! Archeologists found olive presses in places like Crete and Cyprus back in 3500 to 4000 BC. Ancient Egyptians also used it for skin care, cooking, and religious ceremonies. Meanwhile, Romans shipped olive oil all over their empire and Greeks saw olive trees as sacred.
6. Yogurt
Yogurt is way older than your grandma’s memory. And that’s because milk fermentation likely began over 5,000 years ago, when nomadic herders created the earliest yogurt-like dairy. Ancient Central Asian and Middle Eastern cultures refined it and enjoyed creamy cultured milk. This makes yogurt a modern treat rooted in ancient preservation hacks.
5. Tea
Your tea habit might be new, but the drink itself may actually be older than written history. A Chinese legend says that Emperor Shennong discovered it around 2737 BC, but evidence shows Han dynasty tombs from 141 BC contained tea leaves buried with Emperor Jing. This confirms that tea drinking is over 2,000 years old. At first, tea was herbal medicine, until it became a daily drink across Asia and the rest of the world.
4. Cheese
What’s even older than tea drinking? That’s right, cheese! It might be more than 7,000 years old as archeologists found pottery strainers in Croatia and Poland with milk-fat residues, dating around 5500 to 5200 BC. This could mean that people made cheese right after domesticating goats and sheep. Later, Romans loved cheese, and medieval monks got creative with flavors and aging.
3. Bread
Believe it or not, bread is older than farming. People from Jordan were making flatbread-style dough using wild grains and water around 14,600 years ago! The dough was baked on stones by hunter-gatherers called Natufians. Later, farming helped bread become a daily staple and by 1350 BC, ancient Egyptians were baking sourdough loaves.
2. Pizza
While pizza feels modern, the idea has been around for thousands of years. In 6th century BC, Persians and Greeks baked flatbreads with toppings like cheese and herbs. And guess what? Romans did too! By the 1700s, Neapolitans were topping flatbread with tomatoes. In 1889, Pizza Margherita was born in Naples in honor of Queen Margherita.
1. Chocolate
If you think chocolate is another modern treat, well, think again. In Ecuador, archeologists found cacao traces on pottery dated to around 3300 BC, and they were used by the Mayo‑Chinchipe people who first domesticated the cacao tree. Long before chocolate bars existed, Maya, Olmecs, and Aztecs turned cacao into a frothy, bitter drink used as medicine.