World's Oldest Preserved Cheese Identified in Taklamakan Desert (Tarim Basin) "Mummy" Burials

I was lazy and didn't report this story when I first came across it!  I am absolutely fascinated with the Taklamakan Desert (Tarim Basin) mummies, who were often buried in tall felt "witch's" hats and woven tartan (plaid) cloth, with the European features, blue eyes and light brown to reddish toned hair.

Great Gouda! World's oldest cheese found - on mummies

Traci Watson, Special for USA TODAY 4:24 p.m. EST February 25, 2014

 

Remains discovered with mummies in China prove to be oldest known samples of cheese

 

Vintage Gouda may be aged for five years, some cheddar for a decade. They're both under-ripe youngsters compared with yellowish clumps – found on the necks and chests of Chinese mummies – now revealed to be the world's oldest cheese.

 

The Chinese cheese dates back as early as 1615 BC, making it by far the most ancient ever discovered. Thanks to the quick decay of most dairy products, there isn't even a runner-up. The world's best-aged cheese seems to be a lactose-free variety that was quick and convenient to make and may have played a role in the spread of herding and dairying across Asia.

 

"We not only identified the product as the earliest known cheese, but we also have direct … evidence of ancient technology," says study author Andrej Shevchenko, an analytical chemist at Germany's Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. The method was "easy, cheap … It's a technology for the common people."



A photo of Small River Cemetery Number 5.  Source (photo was not
accredited to wherever the author of the website took it from). 

The cheese, like the mummies, owes its existence to the extraordinary conditions at Small River Cemetery Number 5, in northwestern China. First documented by a Swedish archaeologist in the 1930s, it sits in the fearsome Taklamakan Desert, one of the world's largest. A mysterious Bronze Age people buried dozens of their own atop a large sand dune near a now-dry river, interring their kin underneath what looks like large wooden boats. The boats were wrapped so snugly with cowhide that it's as if they'd been "vacuum-packed," Shevchenko says.