Traces of the world's oldest cheese found in Croatia: report

The cheese is often aged to allow it to ripen and change its taste for the better. However, you never want to eat what is claimed to be the oldest cheese in the world. Aged in extremis, they were found riddled with harmful bacteria or hung on Chinese mummies. Delicious, they are not.

It is now a question of finding the oldest cheese in the world in the deserts of North Africa or in China, but rather in what is currently Croatia, on the beautiful Dalmatian coast. Going back 7,200 years at the time – and preceding the last record holder of about 3,800 years – you can not even try to eat it, because only traces of its fatty acids have been found in the pots.

This discovery, carried out by an international team and led by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, has not resulted in spectacular revelation of cheese. Instead, the team looked at the idiosyncratic chemical footprints left by these fatty acids and, with historical evidence on agricultural practices at the time, concluded that it was representative of the species. a process of making cheese.

Archaeological evidence suggests that agricultural practices began to spread in Europe around 9,000 years ago. Some have linked this spread to the development of dairy products: its high caloric intake and portability have certainly made it a good cry when farmers spread their wings. In the same vein, cheese would have been ideal because it can be kept much longer than liquid milk.

What seemed odd was that, although closely related, milk production was very strongly highlighted at that time, but not cheese production. The Mediterranean showed only the latter about 5,200 years ago. Was everyone missing something?

The fatty acids, found inside two clay pots found in two new stone age villages (Neolithic) along the coast of Croatia, have proven to be factors determinants. Fortunately, as explained in the PLOS ONE study, they had not yet been watered during excavations, which allowed to keep a large amount of fatty acids on the shards (a ceramic fragment, FYI).