text: how were chopsticks discovered? imagine you're a caveman with no tools to eat food.  do you choose two sticks as your food-eating tool?  how the heck did that happen? this was on discovery channel, incidentally, when i chanced upon your question.  in the past as cavemen, the chinese people had discovered rice for quite a while, using various ways to cook rice or meat, such as hollow bamboo, mud, and leaves. when it was hot, they probably used sticks: two sticks like a pair of tongs to hold the packet or the bamboo together. slowly, it evolved from sticks, to wood, and as the chinese flourished into a civilisation, it was decorated with laquer, made from jade, carved from ivory, and it's uses increased from just being a tool to pick up food, to being used in quick cooking like stir-frying, to picking scraps of food off the plates, to even cutting chunks of food at the table or in the wok through a skillful manipulation of the fingers and wrists. this ubiquitous tool spread to korea, japan and to many parts of asia where the chinese migrated, and brought their culture along with them.