The world's oldest cheese has been discovered in a Chinese tomb
The world's oldest cheese has been discovered around the neck of a mummy.
A 3,600-year-old coffin was opened at the Xiaohe Cemetery, in China, during an excavation in 2003, when researchers discovered the cheese wrapped around the neck of a mummified woman.
It may look like a piece of jewellery but researchers eventually concluded that it was the oldest cheese in the world.
Qiaomei Fu, a palaeogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told NBC News: "Ordinary cheese is soft. That's not the case here. It has become a really dry, dense, hard dust."
She explained that the body in the coffin had been well preserved thanks to the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin.
Samples taken during the exhumation revealed that the cheese found was kefir cheese, which is made from fermented kefir grains, and researchers also said that traces of goat and cow's milk were identified.
(QG - Source : NBC News / Picture : © Unsplash)