The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - Bobby Henderson [48]
Europe is the simplest example of the great work of the FSM. We can easily bear witness to the numerous pastas attributed to Italy, where one finds the origin of the contemporary name “Flying Spaghetti Monster” in the pasta called “spaghetti.” This long thin cylindrical pasta is not the only pasta on the menu; the types and shapes vary tremendously and the sauces that accompany them bring the selection to heavenly proportions. This is the most commonly cited example of evidence for the FSM, but there is evidence implying His existence before Italy discovered pasta. Certain geographical features are even named after Him. The Danube River is a perfect example: It is simply the old Hungarian term for “Da Noodle River.” Even the uppity French have unquestionable Stone Age fossil evidence of His work in the “Acheulean Stone Twirling Spaghetti Fork” from Saint-Acheul, France, which has been dated approximately 1,000,000 to 300,000 b.c.e. From this we can gather unquestionable evidence of His hand in human cultures dating back as far as one million years.
Europe, while first discussed in this essay, is not the starting point of Pastafarian history. Africa, the birthplace of humanity, is a continent that is only beginning to be discovered by Pastafarian archaeologists, its potential for providing incontrovertible evidence of the Noodly One’s manipulations is only recently being realized. This minor oversight of the archaeological community is exemplified by the presence of only two significant facts of historical record. The first is the presence of their own version of pasta, the Moroccan couscous, which was obviously manna from Heaven and its abundance and shape is reflective of the environment in which it is eaten. Couscous is shaped in the likeness of sand, to match the sandy desert environment in which the early Moroccans lived. This is an example of how the FSM is kind and understanding of the people in giving them a gift of pasta to which they can relate. Without an example of stringy spaghetti in the habitat, the people would not have known what to do with stringy noodles, so the FSM shaped their pasta to match that of sand and instructed the locals to eat it. Now great sand dunes can be looked upon as manna from Heaven in the form of huge piles of couscous. The second example is from ancient Egypt. Due to a mistake in translations from the Rosetta Stone, the word for “reed” was substituted for “Megaghetti” (a large diameter form of spaghetti), thus the hieroglyphs were incorrectly interpreted as showing people gathering reeds instead of making huge bundles of megaghetti. The Phoenicians were said to have made reed boats to sail the seas, and everyone knows this is impossible. Anyone would know that megaghetti boats would self-seal in a pasty mass when contacting the warm ocean waters, producing a leakproof, seaworthy vessel. It is through these original megaghetti boats that trade in the Mediterranean Sea was started. So we see that from Africa, the FSM touched the desert people and started major trading empires. We shall go across the Atlantic to the New World empires.
South America had great ancient civilizations. They had gold galore, they had yams, chocolate, potatoes, corn, cocaine, calendars that needed a leap day every few hundred years, extensive agriculture, and a huge bureaucracy. However, they lacked three important things required in any ancient civilization: They never utilized the wheel, they didn’t have horses, and they had no pasta. The shame of not being able to roll or ride was bad enough, but to not eat pasta pulled at the very fabric of society. Both the Incas and the Aztecs tried to make up for these shortcomings. They conquered natives, they collected gold, they made temples, they pleaded to inferior gods, but nothing they tried worked. In desperation they started sacrificing humans to appease the inferior gods in hopes of gaining the great knowledge of noodles to