Cheese: Not as newfangled as we thought

Researchers have linked ancient milk residue (thousands of years-old) to early forms of cheese-making. The scientists say this research provides new insights into the human diet and food production technologies.?

By Staff,?Reuters / December 14, 2012

This is a file photo of a street vendor selling regional smoked cheese 'oscypek ' in Zakopane, Poland. Little Miss Muffet could have been separating her curds and whey from the sixth millennium B.C., according to a new study that finds the earliest solid evidence of cheese-making.

AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, File

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Scientists have found the earliest evidence of prehistoric?cheese-making from a study of 7,500-year-old pottery fragments that are perforated just like modern cheese?strainers.

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Milk production and dairy processing allowed early farmers to produce food without slaughtering precious livestock, and making cheese?turned milk into a less perishable food that was more digestible for a population who at the time would have been intolerant to the lactose contained in milk.

Researchers from the?University of Bristol in Britain, with colleagues in the?United States?and?Poland, analyzed fatty acids embedded in prehistoric pottery from the Polish region of Kuyavia, and found they had been used to separate milk into fat-rich curds for?cheese and lactose-containing whey.

"The presence of milk residues in sieves ... constitutes the earliest direct evidence for?cheese-making," said M?lanie Salque from?Bristol, one of the authors of the research, which was published in?the journal Nature.

Peter Bogucki, another researcher involved in the work, said: "Making cheese?allowed them to reduce the lactose content of milk, and we know that, at that time, most of the humans were not tolerant to lactose."

Milk residues have been found at ancient sites up to 8,000 years old in?Turkey?and?Libya, but there was no evidence that the milk had been processed into cheese.

Until now, the earliest evidence of?cheese-making came from depictions of milk processing in murals several thousand years younger than the pottery fragments.

The researchers believe other vessels found in the same region were used for other specific purposes. Jars lined with beeswax were probably for storing water, and pottery containing the remnants of carcass fats was probably used for cooking meat.

"It is truly remarkable, the depth of insights into ancient human diet and?food processing technologies?these ancient fats preserved in archaeological ceramics are now providing us with," said?Richard Evershed, who heads the?Bristol?team.

(Reporting by Chris Wickham; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/aq_9_MRUalU/Cheese-Not-as-newfangled-as-we-thought

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