It’s a well-known cliché: the French a-do-rent cheese. On average, we consume 26 kilos per person each year; if that seems enormous, it must be said that our beautiful hexagon offers a lot of choice, with more than 1600 different cheeses produced from cow’s, sheep’s, goat’s milk … Just writing these lines, we have plenty mouth watering.
Unusual info of the day : a group of archaeologists have just discovered the oldest cheese in the world. This was kept in a jar in Egypt, well hidden at the bottom of the tomb of Ptahmes, located in a New Kingdom necropolis in Saqqara, south of Cairo.
First discovered in 1885, the tomb (about 3,200 years old) was looted and then lost – it was discovered a second time in 2010.
Cheese contaminated with bacteria
To determine the nature of the strange substance found at the bottom of the jar, archaeologists first purified and dissolved the proteins it contained. Then they analyzed them by chromatography and spectrometry. The operation revealed the presence of cow’s milk, but also sheep’s and / or goat’s milk. Also, the presence of a tissue in the jar indicates that the cheese must have been solid.
However, there is no question of making a slice of bread several thousand years old: archaeologists have indeed found traces of peptides in their samples suggesting that the cheese was probably contaminated by Brucella melitensis, the bacterium responsible for brucellosis.
This disease transmitted to humans by animals – generally by eating unpasteurized dairy products – can cause serious complications in the absence of rapid treatment: in France, in 2016, 25 cases were identified, mainly in the region. Parisian.
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