Chopsticks – Arrested Evolution?

Why haven't chopsticks evolved?

    
    Here’s my question, naïve as it may sound: Why did chopsticks fail to undergo a design evolution in the same way eating implements in the West did?  After all, chopsticks have been around in China at least since the Shang dynasty (1600 – 1100 BC) so you would expect that they might have “evolved” somewhat.  This is not to say that the chopsticks are inferior to western eating implements but rather is meant to underscore the fact that most man-made objects change with time.  Henry Petroski has put it this way: “The form of made things is always subject to change in response to their real or perceived shortcomings, their failures to function properly.”  The answer is surely not that chopsticks have achieved the ultimate form for the purpose of conveying food from plate to mouth.  Like biological entities that can always be considered transitional forms in evolution, made things are in theory always changing in ways that make them better suited to serve their purpose.  In particular, it is the contrast in design complexity and variety between these two sets of implements that intrigues me.  Western eating implements have undergone innumerable changes over time resulting in a pretty impressive arsenal of specialized tools to manipulate and transfer our food.  To my knowledge, chopsticks have not.
    I don’t want to trace the whole evolution of western eating implements here but I need to at least give you a mindset so you can help me find the answer to my question.  We can surmise, from historical, archeological and anthropological evidence, how western eating implements evolved.  Consider the spoon: We can imagine first the cupped hand, then the shell, shell with affixed handle, carved wooden spoon, ladle, bronze spoon, iron, silver, stainless etc.  Now the knife: accidental injury from sharp flint, selection of flint shards for basic cutting and scraping, development of knapping, affix handle, bronze, iron, tempering, table-knife with rounded off point.  The fork: forked branch for the spit of for spearing, 2-tined metal fork to stabilize food being carved, 4-tined fork suitable for stabilizing, piercing and scooping.
    Contrast this to the chopstick if you would: use of twigs to pluck hot food from the pot or fire, refinement to 2 sticks as an extension of the fingers.   Period. Over 4,000 years. I don’t get it.  What happened to change based on shortcomings? (My apologies to those of Asian descent as I know full well that I oversimplify.  Many subtle improvements have been made to the chopstick including the rounded eating end and the squared-off holding end, to mention only the two most obvious.)
    Now I know that a lifelong chopstick user can be pretty nimble but I think it is important to note that Asian food has evolved along side the eating implements and that the two compliment each other.  By this I mean the rice is sticky and the rest of the food tends to be served in small morsels.  So, the food has been adapted to accommodate the utensils in a way. Try to eat a sirloin steak with chopsticks and you will see what I mean.  Chopsticks work best with the food that has evolved with them.  Can we say the same about western eating implements?  Somehow I don’t think so and I suspect that western implements are more versatile, at the risk of being ethnocentric.  The test might be to have a lifelong chopstick user eat western food with chopsticks and compare this to a lifelong knife/spoon/fork user eating Asian food.  Guess who would have a harder time.  I think it would be the chopstick guy.  
    I acknowledge the vast cultural differences between east and west.  The Chinese, for example, have always abided by this advice from Confucius:  "The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table."   The barbarism of having a knife at the dinner table is perhaps best illustrated by noting the form of the dinner knife in its present form.  King Louis XIV grew tired of having his dinners interrupted by arguments that ended in bloodshed and so in 1669 he ordered that all dinner knives have their tips blunted. This only to stress that it is not the differences in eastern and western cultures that I wish to focus on but rather the objective differences between the respective eating implements and how well they function.
    Having given this some thought, I must admit that I have no good explanation for the apparent design evolutionary dead-end chopsticks represent.  Again, let me emphasize that used by Asians to eat Asian food, chopsticks seem to work as well as western implements used by westerners to eat western style food.  Perhaps, the persistence of chopsticks represents Occam’s razor (if you permit me to apply it to design) at work, i.e. Asian culture has settled on the most parsimonious solution to the food-handling problem.
    One last thing.  I have not done an exhaustive search for evidence of current evolution in chopstick design but I did come across this iteration (below) by German designers Müller Johannes and Moritz Willborn and what strikes me at least in this case is the convergence towards the fork.

    Any thoughts?

Joseph Froncioni

Comments

[pinguin kostüm]

god given hands to eat use them

[Thomas Sabo Charms]

Have a look at that page.

[Chopsticks]

Eating with chopsticks is my favorite tradition of Asia. It's nice to see diversity in cultures.

[Miroslav Miskovic]

Scientific-technological revolution and the historical consciousness.The way how the mankind developed through last 40 000 years,expressed in terms of semiotics.

[Nergock]

The Germans design of the chopstick is terrible. What's up with the extra "braches"? It serves no purpose and makes cleaning and the storing the chopsticks more difficult.

[david hamm]

I'm afraid, you don't understand evolution very well if you think "more" evolution in some way corresponds to "better".
Look at blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) more than 4 billion years on the planet and still around. I'm doubtful humans will be as successful despite the extensive changes to our ancestors.

[Anon]

Buddy, I know you don't mean to be offensive, but your article really is incredibly offensive. You flat out admit that you didn't even do your research, and your entire premise isn't even logical - "chopsticks don't make sense to me, and they haven't changed in 4,000 years, so there must be something wrong with them"? Really? You seem like a nice person, and your blog isn't half bad, but this was low.

[Aubrey]

Chopstick design changed in different Asian countries, adapting to the diverse eating habits, types of wood available, physical bone size of different Asians. World of difference between size, material, and shape of say Chinese (regional variations) versus Japanese or Korean.

[John]

https://www.asianartmall.com/chopstickshistory.htm

Have a look at that page. The use of chopsticks was convenience, at first. later, with the rise of Confucianism, it became a matter of not using an "instrument of violence" at the dinner table. Chopsticks are, all things considered, remarkably efficient for the type of food they're intended for. No, you wouldn't use them to eat a steak, but have you been to a hibachi grill? The steak is cut for you. The piecewise style of Chinese and Japanese food lends itself to a utensil that is able to grasp, without mangling these pieces. Ever try to eat sushi with a fork?

Another link on the subject:

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-01/09/content_297513.htm

Cultural differences. Economical use of a material that exists in great quantity. Suitability to purpose. That's the short answer to "why haven't they changed chopsticks?"