Chinese scientists discovered the world’s oldest cheese buried within mummies in Xinjiang desert.

Chinese scientists claim to have identified the world’s oldest known cheese, moving back around 3,500 years, buried with mummies in the Tarim Basin in far western China.

The scientists discovered goat DNA and fermenting microorganisms from Bronze Age dairy samples sprinkled around the necks of corpses in coffins at the Xiaohe cemetery in Xinjiang’s Uygur autonomous province.

“It seems that the Xiaohe population actively adopted animal husbandry from steppe culture and that the related dairy fermentation product, buttermilk cheese, became an important part of the Xiaohe culture and subsequently spread further in inland East Asia,” according to a recent research report.

On Wednesday, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University Third Hospital, Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute, and Xinjiang University published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Cell.

Buttermilk is a fermented drink prepared from milk and kefir grains, with a thinner consistency than yoghurt. It is drained to provide soft cheese. The three dairy samples tested in the study were recognised as kefir cheese due to the “presence and abundance of proteins from ruminant milk, lactic acid bacteria, and yeast in the samples,” according to the report.

The Tarim Basin, a harsh desert in Xinjiang, is home to Bronze Age mummies from roughly 3,300 to 3,600 years ago.

Their unusual “Western” physical appearance, attire, and apparent farming techniques involving cattle, wheat, and kefir cheese has puzzled researchers for decades, who are curious to learn about the mummified individuals’ 

In 2021, an international group of experts confirmed that the mummies were direct ancestors of the Ancient North Eurasians, not intruders to the region.igins and heritage. 

In the most recent investigation, the Chinese team discovered that the kefir cheese was created with cow and goat milk, which they claimed was “consistent with the historical record of kefir production using cow milk”.

They stated that the cheese production procedure drastically lowered the lactose concentration, allowing the Xiaohe people, who were “genetically lactose intolerant,” to consume dairy.

“Making buttermilk cheese was likely a measure that not only extended the shelf life of raw milk but also mollified gastrointestinal disturbance caused by lactose,” they pointed out.

According to senior author Fu Qiaomei, the finding also supports the theory that “kefir culture” has been in the Xinjiang area since the Bronze Age, defying a long-held assumption that the fermented milk drink originated only in the North Caucasus region of what is now Russia.

“Although it was previously suggested that kefir was spread from the Northern Caucasus to Europe and other regions, we found an additional spreading route of kefir from Xinjiang to inland East Asia,” the study’s authors stated.

They stated that kefir’s spread was “likely accompanied by cultural interactions, as various archaeological evidence suggests cross-regional exchanges between the Bronze Age Xinjiang and Tibetan populations”.

“As kefir can only be produced through inoculating milk using existing kefir grains, these fermenting microbes serve as an ideal proxy to track the history of kefir production,” according to the authors.

According to Fu, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ molecular palaeontology laboratory, the finding of ancient cheese provided a unique opportunity to study past diets and societies, as keeping food over thousands of years was “extremely difficult”.

When scientists discovered a peculiar white fluid smeared over the skulls and necks of many Xiaohe mummies two decades ago, they assumed .

According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fu’s team solved the puzzle in the world’s first metagenomic investigation of ancient dairy samples, thanks to advances in ancient DNA research.

as reported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fu’s team solved the puzzle in the world’s first metagenomic investigation of ancient dairy samples, thanks to advances in ancient DNA research.

“This is an extraordinary study, allowing us to observe how a bacterium evolved over the past 3,000 years,” Fu informed the crowd.

“By examining dairy products, we’ve gained a clearer picture of ancient human life and how they communicate with the world.”