A group of researchers discovered a substance recognized as “kefir cheese” 21 years later in a 3,600-year-old coffin opened in 2003 on the Xiaohe Cemetery in Xinjiang, China.
The cheese hung across the neck of the mummified younger girl excavated in 2003 and appeared like jewellery, however researchers have now decided that it’s the oldest piece of cheese on the planet, based on Information from the sky.
A paleogeneticist on the Chinese language Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Qiaomei Fu, stated NBC Information“Common cheese is mushy. This isn’t. Now it has develop into a really dry, dense, arduous powder.”
Fu additional defined that when the coffin was exhumed, the physique was completely preserved as a result of dry desert local weather of the Tarim Basin.
She additionally revealed that her group collected samples from three tombs on the cemetery and studied the DNA to find out the evolution of the cheese over hundreds of years.
The “samples” had been later recognized as kefir cheese with proof of goat and cow milk within the dairy.
The analysis group wrote: “These 3,500-year-old kefir cheese samples are among the many few dairy stays preserved from greater than 3,000 years in the past and had been produced by the Bronze Age Xiaohe inhabitants – a inhabitants with combined existence and strategies.” .
Moreover, Fu was requested by NBC Information if the cheese was nonetheless edible and she or he would attempt it, to which she replied “No means”.
