3,600-Year-Old Cheese Found Inside Coffin With Mummy At China’s Xiaohe Cemetery
Scientists have finally found the oldest cheese in the world, aged at 3,600 years. It was found buried with its resting place on the neck of its mummified owner in a grave excavated from the Xiaohe Cemetery in Xinjiang, China. That ancient piece of cheese was buried with its resting place on the neck of its mummified owner in an excavated coffin from the Xiaohe Cemetery twenty years ago. This is one of the most important finds leading to an insight into the lives and traditions of that time.
A Major Archaeological Find
Though the cheese was discovered in 2003, scientists recently confirmed that it was the oldest cheese discovered to date. Paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fu Qiaomei in Beijing said that cheese had dried out and became very hard over the years. "Regular cheese is soft, but this one has turned into dry, dense dust," she told NBC News.
The dry climate of the desert in the Tarim Basin has helped preserve this cheese, as well as the body, boots, and hat of this young woman. Cheese could have played a special part in the funeral rites of the Xiaohe people.
Ancient Dairy Practices In Archaeological Discoveries
According to Fu, the study of the cheese gives quite a big picture of how the Xiaohe people lived. The discovery shows how animal farming evolved in East Asia and what people ate back then. This is normal in ancient cultures to integrate items of value with their dead; therefore, the existence of cheese gives a very clear insight into the importance of dairy consumption in their lives.
Understand Dairy Consumption
To know more about the cheese, samples of DNA were collected from three tombs in the Xiaohe Cemetery. From the analysis of the samples, it has been indicated that the cheese was kefir. Kefir is a type of fermented milk obtained by using kefir grains, and in this case, goat and cow's milk were used in preparation. Xiaohe people, on the other hand, were lactose intolerant. We are therefore left asking ourselves how they consumed dairy when they did so, given that pasteurization and refrigeration were absent. It decreases its lactose content, so even lactose-intolerant people can enjoy it.
We might learn from the DNA of a Lactobacillus species that people have been using over thousands of years," the study group said in a paper they published in 'Cell'. These kefir cheese samples dating back to 3,600 BC are, they say, the oldest remains of dairy origins ever found, showing lifestyles and techniques used by the Bronze Age Xiaohe people are exceptional.
An Inedible Discovery
But of course, with this wondrous discovery, Fu Qiaomei joked that she wouldn't taste the ancient cheese: "No way." The analysis used high-tech DNA methods to gather information about the ancient kefir cheese, providing a glimpse into an era of lost food practices.
