About Pasta?

They certainly had some kinds of pasta in Europe before the time of Marco Polo.  There are medieval recipes for lasagne for example.

Pasta and noodles are virtually the same, wheat flour instead of rice flour.

Not exactly rocket science, easily possible they were “invented” separately.

No.  Pasta is not made from Chinese roots.  It is made from a special type of flour.

We will never know, even if we can prove Etruscans made pasta in 600BC, Chinese could have also had their own variation hundreds of years before. Its not hard to figure out if you have eggs, wheat/rice flour and water

WIKIPEDIA is your friend and has the answer. I know because I just checked, lazybones.

I quote some statements from Wikipedia

- The first concrete information concerning pasta products in Italy dates from the 13th or 14th century.

(Interestingly: Polo's travels took place at the end of the 13th century.)

- There is a legend about Marco Polo importing pasta from China; however, it is actually a popular misconception, originating with the Macaroni Journal, published by a food industry association with the goal of promoting the use of pasta in the United States.

I see contradicting information at Wikipedia

which I guess should not surprise me

but in this case it's contradicting information with citations.

In other words: apparently experts are disagreed with regard to what does and does not qualify as "pasta"

and when it was introduced into Italy.

For example: some claim firm dates of 9th c. - based on the Arab introduction of Durim wheat in Sicily at that time...

but just because Durim wheat is the main ingredient of pasta does not allow us to conclude that it was used at that time to produce pasta.

Of course

Polo isn't credited for bringing back spaghetti and lasagna and macaroni (as we know them) to Italy

but

rather

credited for bringing back the ***idea of noodles*** to Italy

- dough cut into long, thin strips and cooked by boiling

the Chinese ***making rice noodles***

and Polo introducing the idea to Italy

motivating Italians to invent wheat noodles (which, if copied from the basic Chinese variety, would have resembled spaghetti)

which eventually grew into the huge variety of Italian pasta we know today.

Interestingly: the Chinese rice noodle is a copy of the northern Chinese wheat noodle.

So in fact wheat noodles were first.

Rice noodles copied that and became popular throughout China.

And pasta apparently became popular in Italy around the time - or shortly after - Polo made his journeys to China.

Coincidence?

Although Rustichello da Pisa writes in his "Travels" that Marco Polo described a food similar to "lagana",  the legend of Marco Polo importing pasta from China originated with the Macaroni Journal, published by an association of food industries with the goal of promoting pasta in the United States.  The 1st century AD writings of Horace, lagana  were fine sheets of fried dough and were an everyday foodstuff. Writing in the 2nd century Athenaeus of Naucratis provides a recipe for lagana which he attributes to the 1st century Chrysippus of Tyana: sheets of dough made of wheat flour and the juice of crushed lettuce, then flavoured with spices and deep-fried in oil. An early 5th century cookbook describes a dish called lagana that consisted of layers of dough with meat stuffing, an ancestor of modern-day lasagna.

Italians (well Etruscans to be precise) were eating pasta in the 4th century BC.  Italian pasta and Chinese noodles are made very differently.

marco polo is a game we play at the swimmign pool.