according to wikipedia The history of cheese predates recorded history. The origin of cheese is assumed to lie in the practice of transporting milk in bladders made of ruminants’ stomachs, with their inherent supply of rennet. There is no conclusive evidence indicating where cheese-makingoriginated, either in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, or Sahara. Cheese-making had spread within Europe at the earliest level of Hellenic myth[1] and, according to Pliny the Elder, had become a sophisticated enterprise by the time ancient Rome came into being,[2]when valued foreign cheeses were transported to Rome to satisfy the tastes of the social elite.
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Earliest origins
Though shards of pottery pierced with holes found in pile-dwellings of the Urnfield culture on Lake Neuchatel – dated at 6,000 BCE – are hypothesized to be cheese-strainers,[3] the earliest secure evidence of cheese making dates back to 5,500 BCE in Kujawy,Poland.[4][5] Dairying seemingly existed around 4,000 BCE in the grasslands of the Sahara.[6] Hard salted cheese, the only form in which milk can be kept in a hot climate, is likely to have accompanied dairying from the outset. Since animal skins and inflated internal organs have provided storage vessels since ancient times for a range of foodstuffs, it is probable that the process of cheese making was discovered accidentally by storing milk in a container made from the stomach of a ruminant, resulting in the milk being turned tocurd and whey by the rennet remaining in the stomach. Though an Arab legend attributes the discovery of cheese to an Arab trader who used this method of storing milk,[7][8]cheese was already well-known among the Sumerians.[9]
Cheesemaking may have begun independently by the pressing and salting of curdled milk in order to better preserve it. Observation that the effect of curdling milk in an animal stomach gave more solid and better-textured curds may have led to the deliberate addition of rennet.
The evidence for cheese (GA.UAR) are the Sumerian cuneiform texts of Third Dynasty of Ur, dated at the early second millennium BCE.[10] Visual evidence of Egyptian cheesemaking has been found in Egyptian tomb murals, dating to about 2000 BCE.[11] The earliest cheeses were likely to have been quite sour and salty, similar in texture either to rustic cottage cheese or to present-day feta. In Late Bronze Age Minoan-Mycenaean Crete, Linear B tablets record the inventorying of cheese (Mycenaean Greek in Linear B:𐀶𐀫, tu-ro; later Greek: τυρός),[12][13] as well as flocks and shepherds.[14]
The earliest ever discovered preserved cheese was found in the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, China, and it dates back as early as 1615 BCE.[15]
Cheese produced in Europe, where climates are cooler than in the Middle East, required less salt for preservation. With less salt and acidity, the cheese became a suitable environment for useful microbes and molds, giving aged cheeses their pronounced and interesting flavors.
CHEESE! 