World’s oldest cheese discovered adorning ancient Chinese mummies

A well-aged cheese makes a pretty tasty snack, and some cheeses have been aged up to a few decades, but a group of archaeologists have found a cheese in the Chinese desert that sets a new bar, as it's been around for 3,600 years!

Archaeologists excavating the grave of an ancient mummy known as the "Beauty of Xiaohe" made an interesting discovery. The dry climate of China's Taklamakan desert not only preserved the mummy in pristine condition, but it also preserved what was likely a delicacy that whe would have enjoyed on her trip into the afterlife. Adorning her neck and chest were several lumps of cheese that were buried with her when she was laid to rest sometime around 1615 BC.

Cheese-making goes back much further than 3,600 years, of course, and Polish archaeologists have found evidence that it goes back as far as 7,500 years ago. However, we know this due to records going far back, and due to pottery shards found at archaeological sites that go back even further. However, no samples of these other ancient cheeses have ever been discovered. This cheese they've found isn't made using rennet, like most other ancient and modern cheeses. Instead, it was made with a bacterial culture called kefir, and was perfectly suited for the lactose-intolerant people who lived there at the time.

"It's the earliest known dairy practice that persists until present times in an almost unchanged way," Yimin Yang, an archaeologist at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, told Discovery News. "The discovery moves the mysterious history of kefir as far as to the second millennium BC, making it the oldest known dairy fermentation method."

What helped these bits of cheese avoid being lost to the ages was the environment they were buried in. The Taklamakan desert, in the northwest of China, is a cold desert that lies in the rain-shadow of the Himalayan mountains. There are several accounts of what the name Taklamakan means, but there is a common theme — "the place of ruins," "the point of no return," "The Desert of Death," and even "go in and you will never come out." The dry, salty, cold environment makes it one of the most stark places on Earth. Whoever buried the "Beauty of Xiaohe" further ensured her preservation by wrapping the coffin in several layer of cow hide.

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Could you eat this cheese? Well, if you're a fan of kefir cheese, you probably could. It's very likely well-preserved enough that it would be edible.

Would you want to eat this cheese? Well, given that it's been sealed inside a box with a dead body for over 3,600 years, no, probably not.

(Photo courtesy: Yimin Yang and Yusheng Liu)

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