While examining a mummy first buried around 3,800 years ago (~1615 BC) in China's Taklamakan Desert, scientists discovered cheese among other after-life snacks draped around the corpse's neck, Live Science reported (picture).
It's the oldest clear example of ancient cheese, according to the scientists. Older samples dating as far back as 6,000 years ago included poorly preserved residual fats that have yet to undergo in depth analysis. (What are they waiting for? We need to know!) Thus, their presence is only circumstantial.
Researchers found a yellow substance (.4 to .8 inches thick) around the necks and on the chests of mummies (with Eurasian features) buried in the desert's Xiahoe Cemetery between 2002 and 2004, but only recently identified it as cheese in a paper they published earlier last month in the Journal of Achaelogical Science.
Without the presence of a certain enzyme found in harder cheeses, it was likely a softer variety known as kefir, still made (and popular) today. Somewhat ironically, the cheese had less salt content than typical of its type -- meaning it didn't stay fresh long and was meant to be consumed on the go. But effective mummification techniques, such as covering tombs in cowhide to block out air, gave them thousands of extra years.
The cheese created by members of the Early Bronze Age was agreeable to those lactose intolerant, which a majority of the population was in those times. The fermentation process used to create it was also believed to have probiotic attributes.
"The evidence of kefir dairy that occurred already at the Early Bronze Age helps [us] to understand why milking was spreading over Eastern Eurasia despite the lactose intolerance of the local population," the authors wrote.
To better understand kafir, the research group even produced a batch of their own.
