A group of archeologists has made a curious discovery for almost two decades in the chiefs and mummies necks in the Xiaohe cemetery in the Tarim basin, in the north -west of China. It was a white substance and clearly very old, but no one knew exactly what it was.
Now a new study has been able to solve the mystery. It was the oldest cheese show in the world.
What is the oldest cheese?
The mummies of the Tarim basin date from 3,300 to 3,600 years, placing the oldest cheese at the Bronze Age. Thanks to advances in DNA analysis technologies, a team of archeologists confirmed that white matter was a type of cheese that extracts mitochondrial DNA from samples.
- The process revealed cow and goat DNA and even genetic material of microorganisms;
- Old cheese is Kefir, a word of Turkish origin meaning “feeling well”;
- Its most important feature is the presence of various bacteria and strains of yeast;
- It has a slightly acidic taste and creamy consistency, remembering the yogurt and can be produced from milk of different animal species (cow, buffalo, goat, for example);
Contained even the same bacterial and fungal species we found today and provided a unique opportunity to study as bacteria Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens evolved in the last 3,600 years.
In modern times, there are two main types of L. Kefiranofaciens: one from Russia and one from Tibet. The gift of the oldest cheese in the world is actually more similar to the Tibetan variety, challenging an ancient belief that the Kefir comes from the mountainous region of northern Caucasus in Russia.
“Our observation suggests that Kefir culture has remained in the North Xinjiang region -China’s west since the Bronze Age,” said Qiaomei Fu of the Institute of Paleontology and Vertebrate Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in a statement.
It is an unprecedented study that allows us to observe how a bacterium has evolved for the last 3,000 years. Also, examining dairy products, we obtained a clearer image of ancient human life and its interactions with the world. This is just the beginning and with this technology we hope to explore other unknown artifacts.
Qiaomei Fu, of the Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
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As for why cheese was rubbed in the mummies of the Tarim basin, it seems that it must have been a valuable resource when they were alive, as samples were found in 10 tombs and mummies, according to the Ifl Science.
The study was published in the magazine Cell.
