China’s answer to cotton candy, dragon’s beard candy is one of the country’s most-loved sweet treats – and it’s also likely to be the world’s oldest. This sublime confection consists of stretched sugar strands so fine that they resemble hair, wrapped around a crunchy core of peanuts, coconut, chocolate or sesame seeds. A staple of Chinese and Lunar New Year celebrations, it also has a cult following in Canada and the USA, where the Chinese diaspora is keeping this ancient food alive for a new generation of candy lovers.

Click or scroll through our gallery to discover more about this ancient sweet – and why it's making a comeback.

Historians date the first candies back to ancient Egypt around 2000 BC – when they were basically a mixture of fruit, nuts and honey – but dragon’s beard candy is believed to be the oldest named variety that we still eat today. According to legend, the delicacy was invented during the rule of the Chinese Han dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. The story goes that the name comes from an emperor’s observation that the wispy strands of sugar mimicked the mythical dragon’s bearded whiskers.

The production of dragon’s beard candy has always been a real art form, which involves stretching a dough-like mixture made from rice flour into small, incredibly thin and delicate strands, then carefully wrapping them around the filling. It’s a famously intricate process that cannot be automated – you can watch artisans creating the treat fresh at food markets all over China, where the spectacle usually draws a crowd. In terms of taste, it’s sweet (but, crucially, not too sweet) and slightly chewy, with a melt-in-your-mouth texture.

Due to the treat's very delicate texture, it’s highly sensitive to moisture and best eaten as fresh as possible, so is tricky to export or store. Nevertheless, places like Sweet Box in Buena Park, California and Kam's Dragon Beard Cotton Candy in Richmond, Vancouver – where the treat has been made for more than 30 years – are keeping the art form alive. And thanks to growing social media attention, the candy is experiencing a resurgence in popularity, with people taking to YouTube and TikTok to try to make their own.

Read on to discover more delicious foods that have their roots in ancient civilisations.

The modern food industry is nothing if not innovative, with new-fangled foodie products seemingly popping up on supermarket shelves every week. But many foods we couldn't live without – from cheese to chocolate – have their roots in ancient civilisations. We peer back through time to discover the ancient foods we still love in the modern day.

Whether you like it drizzled on your porridge or stirred into tea, honey probably makes an appearance on your breakfast table from time to time. And the glorious gold liquid has been used as a sweetener since ancient times. Mentions of the sweet stuff have been found in scripts from Mesopotamia (encompassing modern day Iraq and other parts of the Middle East) and ancient Egypt that hark back as far as 2100 BC. 

Like many ancient foodstuffs, the origin of noodles – a stalwart of Asian cuisine today – is disputed. Theories linking noodles to ancient Italian, Arab and Chinese cultures abound, but a discovery made back in 2005 may have solved the mystery. Archaeologists uncovered what they perceived to be 4,000-year-old noodles at the Lajia archaeological site in northwest China. Early mentions of the ingredient also appear in literature from China's Eastern Han Dynasty (dating to between AD 25 and 220).

Often tipped as the world's oldest alcoholic drink, mead conjures images of medieval banquet halls and royal feasts. But its history stretches back even further still. Evidence of the fermented honey drink has been found on Chinese pottery as early as 7000 BC and it was popular with everyone from the ancient Greeks to the Mayans. The ancient drink is making something of a comeback in the modern age too. 

Today, bone broth is revered by health food fanatics and paleo dieters, but it has a very long history indeed. The nutrient-packed broth is made by simmering leftover bones in water, often with vinegar and/or herbs and spices. Despite its modern popularity, it's thought to have originated with hunter-gatherer tribes in the late Stone Age.

A mainstay in modern Indian cooking, ghee is a thick, clarified butter known for its deliciously nutty flavour. In recent years, it's also become favoured by followers of the typically grain-free, paleo diet, who wax lyrical about its role as a nutritious fat source. But its roots go much deeper. It originated in ancient India, with millennia-old Sanskrit texts hailing it as fit for the divine. It's also bound up with the Hindu religion, which says that deity Prajapati conjured the foodstuff himself.

A pillar of Chinese and other East Asian cuisines, soy sauce is favoured for its rich umami taste and has been used for thousands of years. It's thought that soy sauce was born from the ancient Chinese paste named jiang, made of fermented vegetables, grains and legumes like soy beans. Over the centuries, the Chinese brought the ingredient to other countries such as Japan, where it remains a staple.

When considering the history of beer, many might point to Belgium or Germany – two countries renowned for their rich beer-brewing traditions. But, while the exact origins of beer are unknown, it's generally agreed that they lie further east. Unearthed ceramic vessels dating back around 5,000 years suggest that the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia (in the Middle East) were among the first to sip some suds. Relics have connected the much-loved drink to the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, too. 

Typically made from fermented fish like anchovies, fish sauce is a key ingredient in Southeast Asian cooking. Although its exact origins are hard to pin down, experts agree that it dates back to antiquity. It's thought that the sauce has its roots with ancient Greeks residing along the Black Sea coast as far back as the seventh century BC. The Roman sauce garum, originally made from fish blood, is another ancestor of modern-day fish sauce.

Curry is one of the world's favourite dishes – and a recent discovery reveals that it's been cooked and enjoyed outside of India for much longer than we thought. Scientists found evidence of an 1,800-year-old curry in Southeast Asia, with traces of spices, including ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg, detected on stone tools unearthed in an archaeological site in southern Vietnam. It's believed people were enjoying curries in India up to 4,000 years ago, but the discovery of non-native ingredients in Vietnam shows how the ancient spice trade linked the cuisines of countries thousands of miles from each other.

The fermented cabbage dish sauerkraut is most readily associated with Eastern Europe today – but did you know its origin story begins in ancient China? It's said that the builders of the Great Wall of China began fermenting cabbage in rice wine to make it last for longer as they toiled away. Now it's often served as an accompaniment to things like schnitzel and bratwurst.

Whether it's humble malt or apple cider, vinegar is a base ingredient in many a kitchen. And, as it happens, it has been for millennia. Over the centuries, vinegar has been made with fruits, alcohol, rice and more, and though its exact roots are unknown, traces of it have been found in both ancient Egyptian and Chinese vessels. Babylonian writings from 5000 BC mention date vinegar too. 

Whether you like a grating of Parmesan over your pasta or a deliciously creamy wedge of brie on your crackers, cheese forms a regular part of many diets. It has many guises, of course, and each cheesy variety has its own unique origin story. But where did it all begin? Nobody knows for sure, but legend has it an Arabian merchant invented cheese by accident, when he used a satchel made from a sheep's stomach to transport milk on a journey. The naturally occurring rennet in the pouch caused the milk to curdle, and a delicious early cheese was born.

You might think that soya milk – a popular substitute for dairy milk – is an uber-modern health food, but it actually has ancient origins. It's said that the cows' milk alternative originated with the ancient Chinese, with cultures here consuming the beverage as early as AD 25.

Beef jerky may seem like a pretty modern snack, but its roots go back much further than you might think. A type of mummified beef jerky was found in ancient Egyptian pyramids in recent decades and, before that, its origins were pinned to the Incas. It's thought that the word jerky comes from the Quechuan (a language spoken in the Andes) word ch’arki, which means dried meat.

There are few things more gratifying than a generous coating of butter on hot toast and, happily for our ancestors, the indulgent dairy product has been around for centuries. According to the American Butter Institute, the first written records of the ingredient date back 4,500 years and take the form of a limestone tablet detailing the early butter-making process. It's thought that production began even earlier, though, with butter being enjoyed by the ancient Greeks, Romans and more.

Wine is enjoyed in almost every corner of the planet today, so it's little surprise that its early origins are hazy. Wine traces have been found in vessels from ancient China, but it was in the Mediterranean that the boozy drink truly flourished in antiquity. The millennia-old drink appears in Greek mythology, was used in both ancient Greek and Roman religious ceremonies, and was also supped at informal get-togethers known as symposiums. It soon gained popularity in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia too. 

Popcorn may be a favoured movie snack but these sweet or salty bites existed way before the silver screen. Experts believe that corn was cultivated in the Americas as far back as 9,000 years ago, with the earliest traces of popcorn dated to some 6,700 years ago – archaeologists found evidence of an old version of the puffed kernel snack in Peru in 2012. Ancient popcorn has been left behind by indigenous American tribes in the states of New Mexico and Utah too.

Tea is so synonymous with Britain that it's easy to forget that the aromatic leaves are barely grown in the UK at all. China is the world's largest tea producer (along with other Asian countries like India and Sri Lanka) and the origins of tea are rooted in Chinese legend. The story goes, a Chinese emperor was sat beneath a camellia sinensis tree (or tea plant) in 2737 BC when a few tea leaves blew into the boiling water he was drinking. The ruler was impressed by the flavour of the drink, and so tea was born. Whether the story has clout or not, ancient China is still credited as one of the earliest tea producers in the world.

Olive oil is so important to Greece that there's a whole museum dedicated to the stuff: the Museum of the Olive and Greek Olive Oil in Sparti. It's thought that production of the delicately flavoured oil began in ancient Israel, where Neolithic-era olive pits, pulp and tools have been found. By the late Bronze Age, Greece began pressing its own olives, building up a booming industry and spreading the tradition across the Mediterranean.

There's nothing quite like a steaming bowl of fresh pasta, slick with butter and black pepper, or doused in a rich tomato sauce. Some 16 million tonnes of pasta were produced in 2019 and our modern obsession with the food is undoubtable, but its origin story is woolly. Most experts agree that pasta is a descendant of the noodles consumed in ancient China, and archaeologists also discovered a relief appearing to depict the process of pasta making in an Etruscan tomb dating to the fourth century BC.

The perfect vessel for a hunk of Cheddar cheese and chutney, delightfully moreish oatcakes are made with oatmeal, fat and often some sugar, and baked or griddled for delicious results. It's thought that, in Scotland, these savoury biscuity snacks were consumed even before the Roman invasion (in AD 43). They were a mainstay of Scottish soldiers' diets in medieval times too. 

Revered by health-conscious millennials, kombucha, a fermented tea drink that's celebrated for its gut-friendly properties, has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. But folks have been celebrating the merits of this trendy beverage long before the modern day. Most people pin its origins to Northeast China, or ancient Manchuria, where it's thought that the drink was first brewed as early as 220 BC, before being brought to other parts of Asia and eventually Europe too.

In the UK and US, tofu was once eschewed as something for hippies and health-food nuts – but this versatile ingredient, made from soya milk curds, has soared in popularity in recent years. Many Asian cultures have long recognised its virtues though. Its exact origins are unclear but one story pins it to a Chinese cook who lived some 2,000 years ago – legend has it, the chef produced tofu when he accidentally curdled soya milk by adding seaweed to it.

Fresh, plain yogurt is a favourite topped with fresh berries and eaten for breakfast, or dolloped on the side of a hearty stew – and people have long recognised its virtues and versatility. As is often the case, the roots of this ancient food are hazy, but it's generally linked to ancient Mesopotamia, around 5000 BC. Much like cheese, it's thought that yogurt was probably invented by accident when transporting milk in the heat.

Bread, in its many forms, is a staple food for populations around the globe, and many countries cherish bread-making techniques and traditions that go back centuries. But who baked the very first loaf of doughy goodness? For years, experts believed that humankind began making bread around 10,000 years ago – a practice that coincided with a move to a more permanent, less nomadic way of life that centred on farming. However, more recent evidence suggests that bread making has its roots with the Natufian, a hunter-gatherer culture who lived in the Levant around 14,000 years ago.

It's hard to imagine life without chocolate and, as it turns out, its history stretches back for many millennia. The beloved food stuff is thought to have roots in Mesoamerican civilisation, and the Olmecs in southern Mexico may have used cacao beans to create ceremonial chocolate drinks as early as 1500 BC. The Mayans and Aztecs also indulged in and celebrated chocolate, and even used it as a form of currency.

Now discover the truth about who invented your favourite foods