History of cheese

The production of cheese predates recorded history. Its origin 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-making originated, either in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, or Sahara. Cheese-making was known in Europe at the earliest level of Hellenic myth and, according to Pliny the Elder, had become a sophisticated enterprise by the time ancient Rome came into being, when valued foreign cheeses were transported to Rome to satisfy the tastes of the social elite.

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, the earliest secure evidence of cheese making dates back to 5,500 BCE in Kujawy, Poland. Dairying seemingly existed around 4,000 BCE in the grasslands of the Sahara. 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 to curd 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, cheese was already well-known among the Sumerians.

...
Wikipedia