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Evidence of fermented milk products in clay pots is the first example of cheese making in the Mediterranean.
Credit: Sibenik Municipal Museum
Around 7,200 years ago, farmers living near the Adriatic Sea packed clay pots filled with soft cheese. And thousands of years later, archaeologists have found traces of this fermented cheese quality, preserved in the chemical signatures left in the vessels.
This new evidence, found on two sites in present – day Croatia, dates from 5200 BC. BC and pushes cheese production in the Mediterranean more than 2000 years, scientists reported in a new study.
Cheese making has probably changed the game for the first farmers. Researchers have written that this may have helped lactose-intolerant adults to consume dairy products because fermentation reduces the lactose content of dairy products. And as a portable and preserved food product, cheese would have been a reliable source of food, as farmers left the Mediterranean for Europe, an expansion that began around 7,000 BC. and lasted about 3000 years, according to the study. [The 7 Perfect Survival Foods]
The Balkan Peninsula is considered the gateway to agriculture north of Europe, said Live Science senior author of the study, Sarah McClure , Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania. According to McClure, finding evidence that cheese production went hand in hand with changes in farmers' farming patterns suggested a connection between cheese and human migration.
Scientists have found signs of cheese making – lipids indicating fermented dairy products – on clay vases collected in two neolithic villages on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia: – Pokrovnik and Danilo Bitinj, researchers reported.
Archaeologists have found traces of cheese lipids in pottery dug at the archaeological site of Pokrovnik in Croatia.
Credit: Andrew M.T. Moore
Archaeological artifacts are often washed during preparation, and this process can destroy or damage residues that indicate how ceramic pots could be used, McClure said. Fortunately, the excavators who prepared the pottery sites decided to keep 10% of the unwashed pieces – a choice that preserved the valuable lipids that indicated cheese production thousands of years ago.
"The residue analysis is relatively new in archeology – people have been doing it for perhaps 10 years," said McClure.
"Now that fieldwork methods are in tune with lab work methods, we find that we should preserve at least one sub-sample without washing – now that we know we can get better residue data. ".
And how was this old cheese?
"I imagine it [was] a kind of fresh and firm cheese, "said McClure," not as spongy as a ricotta, with a little more weight – like a farmer's cheese or maybe like a feta ".
A mature story
The inhabitants of the Mediterranean have been drinking milk for at least 9000 years, researchers have determined on the basis of the remains of dairy products found on 500 pieces of prehistoric ceramics from all over the Mediterranean. And the first evidence of cheese making dates back to around 7,500 years, discovered in 24 pieces of pottery collected in Poland.
In some cases, real pieces of old cheese have survived to this day. In 2014, researchers reported discovering preserved preserved yellow cheese pieces wrapped around the neck of 3,800-year-old mummies in China; the cheese was probably buried with corpses as a snack for the afterlife.
Another piece of old cheese, described by researchers as a "bleached and solidified mass," was recently discovered in a 3,000-year-old Egyptian tomb, previously reported by Live Science. But you would not want to taste this cheese; molecular evidence in cheese indications that he might have been infected with Brucella bacteria, which transmit brucellosis, a nasty gastrointestinal disease.
The new results were published online today (September 5) in the journal PLOS ONE.
Original article on Science live.
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