Several mummies laid over 3,500 years ago in northwestern China bore an enigmatic white substance. These preserved bodies were discovered nearly two decades ago at the Xiaohe Cemetery, a bronze-age site in the Tarim Basin. However, the mystery goo smeared on their heads and necks continued to defy explanation, until now—it’s cheese.
According to a new study, published in the journal Cell, traces of cow and goat DNA were found in the white layer on mummies, suggesting it was kefir cheese, a probiotic soft cheese, made using bovine and caprine milk.
“This is the oldest known cheese sample ever discovered in the world,” Qiaomei Fu, study co-author and palaeontologist at Beijing-based Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said.
“Food items like cheese are extremely difficult to preserve over thousands of years, making this a rare and valuable opportunity.
Few dairy remains have shown preservation longer than three millennia, let alone some 3,500 years. Genetic analysis of the Bronze Age samples also allowed scientists a peek into the mixed lifestyles of the Xiaohe people, who relied on a combination of subsistence activities, including hunting, farming and dairying.
Livestock, such as goats and cows, raised by these communities also had a correlation to their potential interactions with steppe populations.
“Although early Xiaohe individuals show little genetic interaction with other populations, mitochondrial data suggest maternal connections with East and West Eurasians,” the study concluded.
Kefir cheese DNA is traceable to the Northern Caucasus, from where it is understood to have spread through Europe and other regions. Researchers studying the mummified remains found a separate route leading from Xinjiang to inland East Asia.
With all this evidence, it’s clear that the Xiaohe community was into fermented dairy production. However, as for why their mummies were adorned, if that’s what it were, with cheese, we don’t know.
