Ancient Mummy Cheese Reveals 3,600-Year-Old Dairy Secret

casualSTEM delivers brief and informative summaries of the latest science news every Saturday. Full of jokes, silly polls, and a cartoon!

Undead Cheese

Even mummies like cheese. ~3,600-year-old cheese samples were discovered on mummified bodies in China’s Tarim Basin.

• DNA analysis found cheese on heads and necks

• Confirmed kefir cheese by cow and goat DNA

• Kefir cheese = fermented w/ kefir grains, bacteria, and yeast

The mummified cheese contained similar bacterium to what is used in today’s kefir cheeses in Russia and Tibet. Suggesting it evolved to better coincide with human hosts over thousands of years. No word on the expiration date though.

That’s a wrap

Catch-up on science in sweatpants