Pasta has a long history, being one of the first foods to use grains, in a sense an early example of a 'convenience food'.

The Italians are most famously associated with pasta but arguably its history goes back much further than the Italians. The earliest archaeological discoveries of wheat farming are from 8,000 - 10,000 years ago, between the Valley of the Jordan River and Mesopotamia. Whether this wheat was ever used for pasta making is however not known

Pasta seems to have evolved simultaneously around the world. Certainly three alternative beginnings seem likely:

Etruscan/Roman; Etruscan archaeological findings near Rome have shown pictures of tools used for home pasta-making. The pasta they would have made were pasta ribbons, called lágana by the Romans, from where the name lasagne originates. Roman literature as early as the 1st century AD describes the use of pasta. Some have suggested that the Romans actually took the idea for Pasta from early Greek Dough.