Cheese making dates back at least 7000 years
How long have human beings been making cheese? A hell of a lot longer than previously thought as it turns out. Apparently, we’ve been turning dairy into cheese for at least 7000 years, which is pretty close to as long as we’ve streaming out of Africa.
Milk residue has been found in pots from Libya nearly 7,000 years old and on 8,000-year old pots from Northwestern Anatolia, a region that roughly corresponds to modern-day Turkey. That provided evidence that people in those areas used milk, but it wasn’t clear if they processed it into cheese by separating the milk proteins and fat from the liquid.
Some prehistoric vessels, however, resemble modern cheesemaking equipment. Thirty years ago, archeologists proposed that sieve-like pots were used to separate the chunky curds from the liquid whey. Those curds could then be worked into cheese. But others thought these sieves may have been used for beer making or to strain honey.
Now Mélanie Salque, of the University of Bristol, and colleagues have identified milk fat on sherds of prehistoric sieve-like bowls from Poland, confirming that the pots were used to process milk.
To do this, the researchers collected residues from the pottery pieces. They first identified particular fats in the residue by mass. Then the scientists measured the amount of carbon-13, a stable isotope of carbon carrying one extra neutron, in two different kinds of fats. This can determine if they came from milk or body fat of ruminants like cows or goats. Isotopes distinguish body fat from milk fat because the amount of carbon-13 reflects an animal’s diet as well as how its body produces and processes each kind of fat.
The researchers also analyzed residues from other pots at nearby sites. They were able to tell the difference between containers that held milk and cooking pots containing animal fat. Some of those containers were also rubbed with beeswax, possibly for waterproofing.
The people who used these containers were lactose intolerant because they lacked the enzyme to process milk sugar. But this sugar remains in the liquid whey during cheesemaking. Knowing now that they could make cheese provides evidence that these early pastoralists were able to gain nutrients from milk without becoming ill from the milk sugar, the researchers write.
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