If you could take just a few of your most precious possessions with you to the afterlife, what would you choose? Maybe you’d choose your favorite book or something that reminds you of a loved one in this world. Or maybe you just want a snack to accompany your journey. In an ancient burial site in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the remains of at least three people buried thousands of years ago were buried with something that likely meant a lot to them: cheese.
The small block of fermented dairy product found around the dead man’s neck is the oldest piece of cheese ever discovered, dating back approximately 3,500 years. Not only is the ancient cheese remarkably well-preserved, but a new evaluation of the block also reveals long-hidden information about human culture and the possible route by which dairy farming may have spread across Asia. study Published in the journal on September 25th cell.
“I can’t think of any other place that has been storing cheese for so long,” he said. Shevan WilkinsWilkins, a biomolecular archaeologist and group leader in ancient proteins at the University of Basel in Switzerland, said of the discovery: “Several studies have identified dairy residues on even older ceramic jars, but these are solid, curd-like fragments that you can hold in your hand, which makes them very unusual,” Wilkins noted. Wilkins, who was not involved in the new study, has studied the origins, history and spread of livestock and dairy farming in Mongolia and other parts of Asia. These ‘cheese necklaces’ are a thrilling piece of ancient history that offers a clear glimpse into the region’s dairy-rich past, Wilkins says.
These were first discovered about 20 years ago. Described in 2014 Protein analysis. The new assessment uses DNA to learn more about the lactose-like mass. Genetic analysis of the microorganisms in the cheese pieces confirmed that it was a piece of kefir cheese. Kefir cheese is a fermented dried dairy product made from the same complex of bacteria, yeasts and fungi as modern kefir, and is usually drunk as a thin, yogurt-like sour liquid. Kefir granules are used to ferment milk as an alternative to rennet commonly used in European cheese making.
Additionally, the new study found that the necklace contained at least two types of cheese: one made from cow’s milk and one made from goat’s milk, a type of goat that was widespread across Eurasia during the Bronze Age. The kefir granules also contain a genetic signature that is closely related to modern Tibetan dairy and kefir strains found in East Asia. Other East Asian strains, as well as strains from Europe and the Pacific Islands, are more closely related to microbes found in the Caucasus, a region long considered the birthplace of dairy products.
Overall, the analysis points to two distinct geographic origins for kefir production: one in Xinjiang and one in the Caucasus, the study’s co-authors say. Fu QiaomeiPaleontologist and paleoanthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, [kefir microbe] subspecies,” Fu said. Popular Science“This is likely the result of nomadic populations moving widely across the dry grasslands of Eurasia,” she adds. As these peoples moved from place to place, they almost certainly engaged in trade, sharing dairy products and the microbial vessels in which they were stored, leaving behind traces of cheese in their wake. And similar dairy fermentation traditions continue today. In Xinjiang, dairy-based foods and beverages remain staples.
“It’s really exciting not only to know that this bacterium was there but to be able to trace it back to where dairy farming spread to the steppe,” Wilkins says.
Xiaohe Cemetery, a cemetery in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is unique for its geography and climate. Its inhabitants once lived on the lush, fertile land along the riverbank. But the waterways quickly changed course and the surrounding desert eroded, forcing the community to migrate elsewhere. The sudden change to a drier environment allowed the bodies to naturally mummify, leaving behind hair, skin, clothing and ancient cheese necklaces relatively untouched by time, he said. Christina Wariner“It’s very rare to find an example like this,” adds biomolecular archaeologist David Schneider of Harvard University, who was not part of the research team. In the new study, the “extraordinary” sample provides part of a lost molecular record of microbial diversity.
Before food production became commercialized and industrialized in the 20th century, all kinds of microbes were used for fermentation. Now, only a few microbes are used, selected for speed and productivity. Understanding the lost diversity of “heritage microbes” is especially difficult for organic products like cheese, Wariner says, because they typically disappear without a trace. Studies like this are needed to bring back the diversity, she notes.
But she’s not convinced that the kefir trajectory that Hu and her colleagues hypothesized is the final conclusion: “I don’t think there’s enough data,” she says. Popular Science. Because the archaeological record of preserved dairy products is so scarce, the researchers mainly compared samples from about 3,500 years ago with DNA from modern microbes that have migrated significantly over the past few millennia, Warriner explains. What’s more, DNA samples become damaged over time, so any data recovered from very old cheeses is incomplete. “This new data is very exciting, but we don’t think it’s conclusive about these histories,” he says. [other] An unresolved possibility.”
Still, the findings underscore the important role dairy has played in the development of human societies around the world. For starters, dairy is a big part of why and how people were able to survive in arid ecosystems like the Asian grasslands in the first place. “People were domesticating microbes before they even knew what they were. [microbes] “It’s been around,” Wariner says. “We think dairy farming is older than the invention of pottery,” she points out, going back at least 9,000 years. The oldest cheese, found around the neck of a mummy, is a time capsule of microbial and cultural history.
So what would it have tasted like? “Quite sour,” Warriner speculates, because traditional Asian dairy products contain a lot of lactic acid from fermentation methods. Wilkins agrees that it would have been sour, “weird” and “unique,” just like some French cheeses have a slight stench that turns into a delicious taste. But this is all just speculation, she adds, because we don’t know exactly how similar the cheese would have been to modern foods, whether it had added flavorings, or whether the region influenced the taste of the milk. “If I could go back in time, I’d probably try different foods and taste them,” Wilkins says.
