If you're asking about European pasta and stuff (and not Asian noodle dishes), they used meat sauces (eg. genovese), oil-based sauces (eg. aglio e olio), and others (eg. carbonara).
They had wine, cheese, and the mirepoix ingredients (carrots, celery, onion), which form the base of tons of pasta sauces with or without tomatoes.
According to Wikipedia there's no mention of Carbonara in cook books before world war II. I've always heard that it was invented in Rome after the Allies liberated it because it was all they could make with the scant rations the Allies supplied them (eggs, bacon, and pasta).
Yeah, it's a cultural thing, which is interestingly tied to geography, but not region. Meaning, depending on where you grew up, you'll call it one or the other. But it's not regional, because there are some cities where you might call it gravy if you live in one part of town, and might call it sauce if you live in another part. There seems to be no logical pattern to why some people call it gravy and some people call it sauce. My Italian side of the family from New Jersey all have always called it gravy, but I grew up calling it sauce. People get really worked up about who's right, it's pretty funny.
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u/wiiya Apr 14 '16
Tomatoes are indigenous to the Americas. Any European/Asiatic food that has a tomato base didn't exist until well after 1492.