Ancient Chinese Mummies Discovered In Cheesy Afterlife 64
astroengine writes "The world's oldest cheese has been found on the necks and chests of perfectly preserved mummies buried in China's desert sand. Dating back as early as 1615 B.C., the lumps of yellowish organic material have provided direct evidence for the oldest known dairy fermentation method. The individuals were likely buried with the cheese so they could savor it in the afterlife. Although cheese-making is known from sites in northern Europe as early as the 6th millennium B.C. and was common in Egypt and Mesopotamia in 3rd millennium B.C., until now no remains of ancient cheeses had been found."
Is it edible (Score:2)
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I can see this on my pizza.
Ask your mummy to make you one.
If we got an inept individual as the emperor ... (Score:2)
Chinese philosophy, even today and which makes it so amenable to communism, is to favor central authority over individualism. Whether that philosophy is for the best remains to be seen. Western attempts at the same resulted in concentrating power in inept individuals
The Chinese do not fear inept individuals as emperors. They fear emperors who have too many of those "bright ideas" which often result in the death of untold millions.
The last "Emperor" that the Chinese had had was Mao, and under his tutelage, more than 60 million Chinese perished, mostly of starvation.
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Listen to your parents! (Score:1)
rennet (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:rennet (Score:4, Interesting)
Not if they're using animal rennet to set the curd. Modern cheeses often don't, but it was the standard method in traditional cheesemaking.
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Is there a reason it can't be hallal? Arab groceries sell stomachs over here.
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Is there a reason it can't be hallal? Arab groceries sell stomachs over here.
Both Kosher and Halal dietary laws mandate separation of milk and meat.
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Well obviously the milk was at one time part of the animal, is there some reason that stomach enzymes must follow different rules? After all they're no more "meat" than the milk is.
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There must be something holy in tits.
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I doubt many of any gender would argue with you. But shouldn't that be teats? Tits on a cow is a rather...unusual image.
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The comment I made on the top of the thread was not innocent. It is one of the "best" preserved secrets in the industry and people are actually socked by it. I only found it out when I went vegan. As a side anecdote , I once asked my sister if she knew how cheese was made, and she told me milk and cream...sure...ignorance is a bliss. Thing is, it turns it out standard cheese is neither vegetarian nor hallal
True -- ignorance is bliss. "Standard" cheese in the US is often labeled as containing "enzymes" without any description of the origin. So you never really know . . .
It really is eye-opening to make some of the foods you usually buy in processed form yourself, from scratch. Cheese, tofu, sauerkraut, beer, whatever. Even just reading a copy of "The Joy of Cooking" is enlightening, since it describes -- in detail -- the process of producing all kinds of things you never thought much about because they were re
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Strangely enough, I tried making cottage cheese myself just a couple of weeks ago and thus read up on a couple of different ways to make it. I used goats milk (because I like it), heated it and then put in lemon juice to curdle it. It ended up wi
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Re:rennet (Score:4, Informative)
Most modern cheeses still use animal rennet.
It depends on how strict your country is on the definition of "cheese". In the EU it's more common because of protectionist policies. The world supply of rennet is too low, however, to meet the demand for cheese so most cheeses are curdled with synthetic rennet or alternative coagulants. Currently only 35% of world cheese production uses animal rennet.
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I just tried to verify your 35% figure - where did you find that out?
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I found it here [wikia.com]. I assume the cheese heads maintaining that wiki have reasonably up to date figures.
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I was surprised to see that United States is the world's largest cheese producer, but most if it is eaten domestically which would explain why it's not often seen elsewhere.
Maybe not cheese, maybe a tool? (Score:5, Informative)
It is rather interesting they were using kefir for cheese making
Yes, this is actually the most interesting finding here, since what they discovered probably wouldn't be recognized as normal "cheese" by many people. It's not like they found a small wheel of cheddar placed lovingly on the chests of bodies. Rennet-based cheeses are what most people in the Western world think of when they hear the word "cheese," or perhaps artificially acidified cheeses, like mozzarella or paneer.
This "cheese" (if indeed that's what it was -- see below) was produced by a slower acidification from fermentation. Then presumably it was strained or dried to separate the solids. The closest approximation for people unfamiliar with kefir would be to take a bunch of yogurt, put it in some cloth, then hang it and let the liquid drain out for a couple days, going past the point of thick "Greek yogurt" to a drier texture. (Technically, this makes labneh, a Middle Eastern-style fresh cheese.) It's a different type of cheese from rennet-based cheeses, but one more common in traditional cultures around the world.
For those not familiar with traditional kefir, it's very different from the store-bought stuff. It depends on a starter composed of "kefir grains," which is essentially a small mass of colonies of many types of microorganisms, which look like a group of small pearl-like things with a rubbery texture. They are very stable and durable, able to be rejuvenated after drying out, freezing, or even being "starved" for months.
The reason this is relevant to the story is that these kefir grains, to my knowledge, have not been replicated using modern scientific methods, despite many attempts. (Most "starters" for things like sourdough bread, yeast for wine, or common fermentations for milk like yogurt, can be cultivated fresh with only minimal effort from the naturally occurring organisms on flour, grapes, or milk.) In kefir, there are too many bacteria in a symbiotic relationship, and scientists still haven't managed to figure out how to get them to create these grains by themselves. The only way to get traditional kefir is to get some grains from someone. (The store-bought stuff is produce, like yogurt, just by using a small number of bacterial strains for fermentation under controlled conditions.)
Because of the difficulty in reproducing traditional kefir grains, there are all sorts of origin myths about it -- stories about it coming from medieval Georgia or the armies of Genghis Khan or whatever.
Anyhow, what I wonder from reading the story is how exactly they know this is "cheese" and not merely a dried form of kefir grains? In the era before refrigeration, kefir grains were essential to preserve fresh milk for later consumption, and where highly prized. There are all sorts of traditional stories from these cultures about people stealing kefir grains, because you couldn't just make new ones easily. You had to get them somewhere.
So, the question that occurs to me is -- why do we assume this is food for the afterlife? Why not consider the possibility that these people were given a gift of kefir grains (in a concentrated dried form) to carry with them to the afterlife -- an essential food preserving and processing tool, which could not be simply "made." It was something you had to carry with you, something you had to get from a previous batch of kefir, so maybe this was the only way to get it to the afterlife.
That would be my first thought, if I found this stuff.
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I wonder if there is any way to sequence the bacterial dna, or even try to revive them? You note that they could be rejuvenated after drying out. This is certainly a longer time, but being effectively freeze dried, it might be possible. If so, you could use it to make that kefir cheese again, and literally taste food from thousands of years ago.
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That is indeed interesting. Thanks for sharing your idea.
This is good news for me, too. Friends have influenced my wife to feed me "The Paleo Diet". I hope she'll buy the idea that cavemen did in fact have cheese after all...so I can too.
And Modern Chinese have no Native Cheese (Score:2, Informative)
My wife is Chinese and I was under the impression that China is the only major country without its own native cheese. Contrast with France or the US.
Not a place Wallace and Grommet would go on vacation.
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My wife is Chinese and I was under the impression that China is the only major country without its own native cheese. Contrast with France or the US.
Not a place Wallace and Grommet would go on vacation.
Lactose intolerance?
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My wife is Chinese and I was under the impression that China is the only major country without its own native cheese. .
Lactose intolerance?
No. Many Chinese people are lactose intolerant, but most cheese contains very little lactose. Generally, Chinese people just don't like cheese. I think it is cultural rather than genetic, since most ABCs (American born Chinese) that I know do like cheese. The mummies were Caucasian, as were the people that lived 3600 years ago in what is now northwest China.
Re:And Modern Chinese have no Native Cheese (Score:4, Funny)
It's a cultural thing, passed down from the 17th century BCE when the mob would kidnap people who didn't pay their debts, haul them out to the desert and bury them to "sleep with the cheeses."
The "why" has been forgotten, but the distaste for cheese lingers on.
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When you think about it it's a big block of intentionally spoiled milk. What's surprising is that so many cultures embrace the stuff.
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Interesting, my wife is also Chinese and I had thought the same thing. I was in China several times and dairy products in general are hard to find. when you do they are typically Japanese imports (expensive and watery).
In Canada she rarely eats cheese of any sort (pizza, macaroni and cheese, etc).
Perhaps over the years they simply moved away from dairy?
To the guy below me: Lactose intolerance?
No, she can drink milk without issue but chooses not to.
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Re:And Modern Chinese have no Native Cheese (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed that is correct, Chinese do not like cheese. However the mummies are from the Xiahoe tomb complex [wikipedia.org] in the Xinjiang [wikipedia.org], whose name in Chinese means "New Frontier". People there are more central Asian than Han Chinese, and China gained control of the area only in the 17th century. Still today, Chinese characters are used side-by-side with Arabic in street signs and such (see Urumqi train station [wikipedia.org] for example).
Point being, culture there is different, and was not even in contact with Han Chinese at the time of the mummies.
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Indeed that is correct, Chinese do not like cheese.
Although, there's been quite a push in recent times to increase consumption of dairy products, coming from several different directions. From the government, who would like to introduce a new revenue source to farming (the urban-rural income gap is an increasing problem), as well as a new protein source to their citizens; from consumers with increasing exposure to Western influences (and the advertisers that would like to sell to them); from parents wishing their children would grow up taller than the prev
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Shelf life? (Score:1)
New Kraft Mummies!!! The cheesiest!!!
Perhaps it's what's killed them (Score:2)
It's not easy being cheesy.
"so they could savor it in the afterlife." (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless there is there are contemporary written accounts available of ancient Chinese burial rites, how could anyone possibly know this?
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Why else would someone put cheese on a dead body?
Perhaps as a final act of revenge? The archeologists should prove that it is particularly stinky cheese to make that plausible.
Or perhaps it is the ultimate preservative: bacteria rather starve to death than eat a dead body covered in that cheese.
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Why else would someone put cheese on a dead body?
Necrophilia . . .
. . . Smegma.
Chinese Affineur (Score:2)
Sounds like the Chinese Affineur overdid it a bit.
Get the cheese to sick bay! (Score:4, Interesting)
Get the cheese to sick bay!
I know I'm showing my age, but that was one of the most popular memes back on Fido-Net... Anyone else remembers that [ejge.com]?
BC (Score:2)
Cheeses before Jesus.