That’s some seriously mature stuff
The oldest cheese in the world has been discovered in a Tomb in China, placed across a mummy’s neck.
There’s some pretty pongy cheese out there, from Stilton, to Roquefort and the aptly named Stinking Bishop.
However, imagine a cheese that has been sat maturing for almost four millennia and just how much that smells.
Well, it actually wasn’t the smell that gave the cheese’s identity away – as the whole ancient mummy thing probably stunk anyway – with it taking 21 years to even identify the cheese correctly.
The 3,600-year-old mummy was discovered after an ancient coffin was opened in the Xiaohe Cemetery in Xinjiang, China, during an archaeological dig in 2003, where what appeared to be jewellery was found draped over the mummy’s neck.
However, scientist have finally tested the substance and identified it as the oldest cheese in the world.
Qiaomei Fu, a paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told NBC News: “Regular cheese is soft. This is not. It has now become really dry, dense and hard dust.”
She went on to explain that the cheese had been well preserved by the Tarim Basin desert’s dry climate where the mummy was exhumed.
Despite general consensus accepting cheese has existed since around 8000BC, researchers wrote in a study published in the journal Cell that the “history of fermented dairy is largely lost in antiquity”.
Fu explained to NBC News that in order to identify the substance, her team lifted samples from three tombs in the cemetery and then processed the DNA in order to trace the bacteria’s evolution down the centuries.
These samples were subsequently identified as kefir cheese, a type of fermented milk similar to yoghurt, originating from the Caucuses.
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Revelations from the research showed how Bronze Age populations functioned as well as how the Xiaohe people consumed dairy before pasteurisation and refrigeration, despite being lactose intolerant.
They wrote: “These 3,500-year-old kefir cheese samples are among the few dairy remains preserved more than 3,000 years and were produced by the Bronze Age Xiaohe population – a population that possesses mixed lifestyles and techniques.”
Fu was asked by NBC if the cheese was edible, to which she replied “no way”.
A 3,600-year-old slice of cheese would really be the showpiece of any cheese board, however, it may be sensible to leave this extra mature fromage behind the glass.
