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Origins

Cheesemaking is an ancient practice with origins that may date back to around 8000 BCE, likely discovered accidentally through the storage of milk in animal stomachs. The earliest archaeological evidence of cheesemaking is from 5500 BCE in Poland and 5200 BCE in Croatia, with additional findings in Egyptian tombs around 2000 BCE. The oldest preserved cheese was found in mummies in China, dating back to 1615 BCE.

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26 views1 page

Origins

Cheesemaking is an ancient practice with origins that may date back to around 8000 BCE, likely discovered accidentally through the storage of milk in animal stomachs. The earliest archaeological evidence of cheesemaking is from 5500 BCE in Poland and 5200 BCE in Croatia, with additional findings in Egyptian tombs around 2000 BCE. The oldest preserved cheese was found in mummies in China, dating back to 1615 BCE.

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Origins

A piece of soft curd cheese, oven-baked to increase shelf life

Cheese is an ancient food whose origins predate recorded history. There is no conclusive evidence
indicating where cheesemaking originated, whether in Europe, Central Asia or the Middle East. The
earliest proposed dates for the origin of cheesemaking range from around 8000 BCE, when sheep were
first domesticated. Because animal skins and inflated internal organs have provided storage vessels for a
range of foodstuffs since ancient times, it is probable that the process of cheese making was discovered
accidentally by storing milk in a container made from the stomach of an animal, resulting in the milk
being turned to curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach.[8] There is a legend—with variations—
about the discovery of cheese by an Arab trader who used this method of storing milk.[9]

The earliest evidence of cheesemaking in the archaeological record dates back to 5500 BCE and is found
in what is now Kuyavia, Poland, where strainers coated with milk-fat molecules have been found.[10]
[11] The earliest evidence of cheesemaking in the Mediterranean dates back to 5200 BCE, on the coast
of the Dalmatia region of Croatia.[12]

Cheesemaking may have begun independently of this by the pressing and salting of curdled milk to
preserve it. Observation that the effect of making cheese in an animal stomach gave more solid and
better-textured curds may have led to the deliberate addition of rennet. Early archeological evidence of
Egyptian cheese has been found in Egyptian tomb murals, dating to about 2000 BCE.[13] A 2018
scientific paper stated that cheese dating to approximately 1200 BCE (3200 years before present), was
found in ancient Egyptian tombs.[14][15] The earliest ever discovered preserved cheese was found on
mummies in Xiaohe Cemetery in the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, China, dating back as early as 1615
BCE.[16][17][18]

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