Scientists unearth the world’s most mature cheese

The 7,200-year-old fatty residue is thought to have Neolithic origins, eclipsing ‘acidy’ Egyptian discovery

NEOLITHIC tribes in Europe were producing cheese more than 7,000 years ago, archaeologists have discovered.

Fatty residue was found in pottery discovered on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, analysis of which revealed evidence of soft cheeses and yogurts dating back 7,200 years, which is 4,000 years before the earliest-known date for cheese-making.

The discovery was made at two archaeological sites in Croatia, where the remains of Neolithic villages and evidence of house structures were found, along with stone tools, pottery fragments and animal bones.

An international team found that Neolithic people in the area were using pottery vessels to hold milk as far back as 7,700 years ago but that 500 years later they started making vessels for fermented products such as cheese and yogurt.

The switch in diet necessitated the production of different containers, the scientists said. “Cheese production is important enough that people were making new types of kitchenware,” said Prof Sarah B Mcclure, associate professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University.

The primitive kitchenware, known as Danilo pottery, included bowls, plates, sieves and round-bodied vessels with distinctive handles and large openings on the sides.

Nearly all of them displayed evidence of being used to produce cheese.

“This is the earliest documented lipid residue evidence for fermented dairy in the Mediterranean region, and among the earliest documented anywhere to date,” the scientists reported in the journal PLOS One.

Different types of residue found on the pottery were tested for carbon isotopes, which can identify the type of fat involved, distinguishing between meat, fish, milk and fermented milk products.

The development of cheese-making “may have opened northern European areas for farming because it reduced infant mortality and allowed for earlier weaning, decreasing the birth interval and potentially increasing population,” the research team said.

Last month, archaeologists working on an ancient Egyptian tomb announced they had discovered the remains of a 3,200-year-old cheese, claiming it was among cheese ever discovered.

But the find in Croatia eclipses the Egyptian cheese by several millennia.

The ancient Egyptian cheese, described as “a solidified whitish mass”, came from broken jars found in the tomb of a high-ranking official called Ptahmes, who was mayor of the ancient city of Memphis.

It would have had a “really acidy” taste, according to Paul Kindstedt, a chemistry professor and cheese historian from the University of Vermont. the oldest