Chopsticks may have originated as early as 5,000 years ago in China.  The first were probably just long twigs used to pluck pieces of food out of cooking pots.  The food itself would then be eaten with the hands (once it cooled) or with a knife, if it was in large pieces. 

We have surviving examples of long chopsticks used for cooking from about 1200 BCE; they were made of bronze, and were found in the ruins of Yin, not far from Anyang, in what is now Henan province.


  This was the heartland of the Shang Dynasty (1766 - 1122 BCE), which was long thought to be legendary.  Archaeological evidence such as the six sets of bronze chopsticks found at Yin prove that the Shang era was real - and that Chinese people were busy inventing things even at that time.

Some sources credit Confucius (552 - 479 BCE) with popularizing dainty chopsticks over the comparatively crude use of a knife as an eating implement.  He urged classy ancient Chinese to "keep well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen" - and to ban knives at the table.  However, his writings do not specifically mention chopsticks.  The first textual evidence of these implements comes from Han Fei (c. 280 - 233 BCE), who mentions them in a philosophical treatise.  Even at that, we have no evidence that the chopsticks were being used for eating - they may well have still been strictly a cooking tool.

By the time of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE), some people were using short chopsticks to transport food from their dishes to their mouths.

  Wealthy diners with expensive lacquer-wear dishes preferred chopsticks over knives or spoons, because the sticks would not gouge or scratch their table-wear. 

One popular theory holds that during the chaotic Southern and Northern Dynasties period (420 - 589 CE), environmental degradation and a population boom left cooks in China with less fuel for their cooking fires.  In order to cook the food more quickly, and burn less wood, they began to cut the ingredients into smaller pieces.  These tiny bits of food were too inconvenient for eating with a knife, so ordinary people began to use chopsticks instead.

A Chinese diaspora around this time spread many cultural ideas to neighboring lands.  Buddhist monks fleeing from the chaos introduced Buddhism to Korea and Japan.  Vietnam and Korea also absorbed the tenets of Confucianism, as did Japan to a somewhat lesser extent.  It is possible that the idea of chopsticks also spread across East Asia at this time, although again this may have been only cooking sticks, rather than those for eating.

Japanese records show that there may have been a connection between the adoption of Buddhism and chopsticks.  The first written evidence of chopstick use is from 712 CE, in the Kojiki, but it shows chopsticks being used only for ceremonial purposes.  Written records of Japanese people eating with chopsticks first appear in the 10th century, although they may have tried it out much sooner.

In Korea, the royal family began to use silver chopsticks in the belief that the silver would tarnish in the presence of poison.  People from the other classes adopted metal chopsticks in imitation of the royals, and Koreans usually use stainless steel chopsticks to this day.  It helps that most Koreans eat their rice with a spoon - rice is notoriously hard to grab with slender, slippery metal chopsticks.  The dependence on reusable metal rather than wooden chopsticks makes Korean implements more sustainable than those in other countries, as well.

Speaking of deforestation, the theory that a lack of wood forced the Chinese to adopt chopsticks early on may not be entirely correct. China is a large and diverse country.  Even if people in the wood-starved north had adopted chopsticks as early as 500 CE, that would not necessarily mean that people living in southern China followed suit.  Textual evidence suggests that it was only during the Ming Dynasty era (1368 - 1644 CE) that chopsticks became the normal means of serving and eating food for Chinese people of all social statuses, all over the country.  This is also when the implements acquired their proper Chinese name, kuaizi.