3600 year old cheese on ancient mummy

The oldest piece of cheese in the world, dating to over 3,600 years, was discovered on the neck and chest of intact mummies in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China.

According to researchers at the Institute of Archeology and Cultural Heritage in Urumchi, the capital of Xinjiang Autonomous Region, small pieces of cheese are pale yellow and identified from 1615 BC

Small pieces of cheese (white markings) on the neck of a mummy.(Photo: Discovery News)

These pieces of cheese were found during archaeological excavations from 2002-2004 in the burial area of ​​Xiaohe, in the Taklamakan desert in northwestern China.

Xiaohe cemetery is built on a natural sand dune with hundreds of mysterious mummies in large wooden coffins. Through DNA testing, those in the coffin here are identified as having origins related to Europeans and Asians, said Discovery News, an expert at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

According to the team, the ancients may have believed that cheeses were buried with dead people so they could enjoy them in the afterlife. This finding provides direct research evidence of milk fermentation methods since ancient times.

Cheese processing is known in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 6th millennium BC, popular in Egypt and Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC. Before this discovery, researchers have never found cheese pieces from ancient times.