Bronze Age desert dwellers unearthed from graves in what’s now northwest China were buried with cheese scattered on their heads and necks — perhaps as a snack packed for the afterlife. A decade after ...

A mummy from the Xiaohe Cemetery, with dairy remains scattered around the mummy’s neck. HONG KONG — When the 3,600-year-old coffin of a young woman was excavated in northwestern China two decades ago, ...

Researchers in China have discovered the world's oldest cheese in a Bronze Age burial site. Right: Qiaomei Fu’s observing the dairy sample for powder-drilling in the clean room at the Institute of ...

For the first time, scientists successfully extracted and analyzed DNA from ancient cheese samples found alongside the Tarim Basin mummies in China, dating back approximately 3,600 years. The research ...

It’s aged — 3,600 years. Scientists have successfully pulled a DNA strand from what they believe to be the world’s oldest cheese, yanking it from Bronze Age mummies in a Chinese graveyard, circa 2,000 ...

Food fermentation is the oldest production practice using microorganisms in human history. Milk fermentation, for example, can be traced back to 6000–4000 BC in India, and Mediterranean populations ...

Fu’s team discovered that the three cheese samples from the graves contained bacterial and fungal species, including Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens and Pichia kudriavzevii, respectively, both commonly ...