World's oldest cheese found on ancient Chinese mummies (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The kefir cheese “has now become really dry, dense and hard dust,” the co-author of a study published this week told NBC News.

When the 3,600-year-old coffin of a young woman was excavated in northwestern China two decades ago, archeologists discovered a mysterious substance laid out along her neck like a piece of jewelry.

It was made of cheese, and scientists now say it’s the oldest cheese ever found.

“Regular cheese is soft. This is not. It has now become really dry, dense and hard dust,” said Fu Qiaomei, a paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and the co-author of a study published Tuesday in the journal Cell.

…

While previous research has suggested kefir spread from the northern Caucasus in modern Russia to Europe and beyond, the study shows the spread also took another route toward inland Asia: from present-day Xinjiang via Tibet, giving crucial evidence of how the Bronze Age populations interacted.

top 16 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] Hegar@fedia.io 27 points 2 days ago

"Chinese" mummies is a bit misleading. The Tarim Basin has a long history of Chinese rule/influence, but not that far back.

These mummies are from a unique population that descended largely from Ancient North Eurasians, a group who contributed smaller percentages of ancestry to Northern Chinese people, Europeans, Siberians and Native Americans.

So these cheese enthusiasts are less Chinese and more like distant foreign relatives to the Chinese who adopted dairy-heavy pastoralism after it expanded through the steppe.

[-] Zathras@lemm.ee 24 points 2 days ago

"I was going to eat that mummy" - Professor Farnsworth

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 11 points 2 days ago

That joke became even funnier when I found out about British people cannibalizing mummies because they're weird freaks.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/eating-mummies-as-medicine

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Mummies were also made into paint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown

[-] Zathras@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

Haha! Never heard of that before. Thanks for sharing. Definitely brings that joke into a new light. :)

[-] SonicBlue03@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago

Also found nearby...

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

She had a cheese necklace as funerary attire? I want to join whatever culture did that.

The irony that East Asia now invented cheese, a thing they don't traditionally eat this historical side of the Han empire.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Maybe it was milk when they buried it

[-] PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I knew someone would eventually get it

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 2 days ago

A necklace of stationary liquid milk would be interesting for a whole other set of reasons.

[-] HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I want to be buried with cheese too.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

There's no point. You can't take cheese with you to the afterlife. Anubis doesn't allow it.

[-] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

I think if enough people did it, Anubis would grow to like cheese.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

He does have a jackal head... dogs do like cheese...

[-] MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world -4 points 2 days ago

NBC News - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)

Information for NBC News:

MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this source

Cell Journal - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)

Information for Cell Journal:

MBFC: Pro-Science - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this source

Search topics on Ground.News

[https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24](https://ground.news/find?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cell.com%2Fcell%2Ffulltext%2FS0092-8674%5C%2824%5C)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/worlds-oldest-cheese-found-ancient-chinese-mummies-rcna172805

Media Bias Fact Check | bot support

this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024

79 points (98.8% liked)

World News

38632 readers

2612 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

quinten@lemmy.world

NewsAutoMod@lemmy.world

jordanlund@lemmy.world

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

little_cow@lemmy.world

lemmyAtom@lemmy.world

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world