Brief by Shorts91 Newsdesk / 12:00pm on 27 Sep 2024,Friday International
A 3,600-year-old piece of kefir cheese has been discovered on a mummified woman's neck in the Xiaohe Cemetery, Xinjiang, China. Found during a 2003 excavation, the cheese was identified after DNA analysis of samples from three tombs. The research, published in Cell, highlights the use of kefir grains to ferment milk from goats and cows, despite the Xiaohe people being lactose intolerant. The Tarim Basin’s arid climate preserved the remains. Qiaomei Fu, paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, noted the cheese’s dry and dense texture but firmly declined to taste it, saying "no way."
