World’s oldest cheese found on 3500-year-old Chinese mummies
DNA and protein analysis has identified a white substance smeared on mummies in China as a kind of kefir cheese, made from cow and goat milk
By James Woodford
25 September 2024
A mummy from the Xiaohe cemetery in China with dairy remains scattered around the neck
LI Wenying/Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute
A mysterious white substance found on Bronze Age mummies in China has proven to be the world’s oldest cheese.
The cheese remnants were first found about two decades ago, smeared on the heads and necks of mummies found in the Xiaohe cemetery in Xinjiang province, which date from around 3500 years ago.
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It has been long suspected that the substance may have had a fermented dairy origin, but only now have molecular tools become powerful enough to confirm their make-up.
Based on the presence of yeast, lactic acid bacteria and proteins from ruminant milk in the samples, Qiaomei Fu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and her colleagues have identified the substance as a kind of kefir cheese.
Kefir is a traditional drink made by fermenting milk using kefir grains, which are pellets of microbial cultures, like a sourdough starter.
