The world's oldest cheese found on the bodies of 3,500 years of Chinese mummies

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In the world there are a lot of very old cheese, but the oldest cheese in the world is now considered crumbs found in the neck and chest of the Chinese mummies. However, the taste may not be too refined.

Cheese came from the distant past - it is believed that the mummies were embalmed in 1615, the year BC. e. In fact, all these millennia cheese was in a kind of vacuum-packed along with the bodies of the mysterious Bronze Age people were buried in the desert of Taklimakan.

Although strange discovery was made back in 1930, scientists have only recently analyzed the proteins and fats found in 3,500-year-old crumbs of food and make sure it's not butter or milk. Chemists from the German Max Planck Institute have discovered that this was the cheese, with cheese cook like you can quickly, without effort and additional costs, so that afford such a product could even poor.

Cheese is preserved thanks to the unusual conditions at River Cemetery number 5 in the Taklamakan Desert in northwest China - the final resting place of the mummies. And the people, and cheese were buried in the sand dunes near the river under a large wooden boats, with the body were very tightly wrapped in cowhide - so tightly that, in fact, were in a vacuum. Thanks to the dry air and the salty soil of the desert remained light brown hair mummies of their felt hats, wool capes and boots of fine leather.

Why people were buried with pieces of cheese on the chest, is unknown, but it can be assumed that the ancestors of the dead gave their food for the afterlife, in the same way as other civilizations buried the dead with bread and wine.

via factroom.ru