The earliest direct evidence of cheese making has now been found in clay sieves (pit pottery) excavated more than seven thousand years old, for example in Kujawy in Poland and on the Dalmatian coast in Croatia. Shards of Reiki pottery have also been found in the Urnfield Mounds of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland and are believed to be cheese sticks; they date from about 8,000 years ago. For preservation purposes, cheese production may have begun with curd pressing and salting. Coagulating the milk in the stomach and stomach of the animal produced a solid and better textured curd, which could easily have resulted in the deliberate addition of kage. Cheese produced in Europe, where the climate is colder than in the Middle East, required less salt to preserve. The earliest written evidence of cheese is the Sumerian cuneiform writings of the Third Dynasty of Ur, dating from the early second millennium BC. Arab legend attributes the discovery of cheese to an Arab merchant who used this method of preserving milk. However, cheese was already known among the Sumerians.
Until its modern spread along with European culture, cheese was most common by far in Europe, and the Middle East and North Africa. Although cheese is still less prominent in local cuisines outside of Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, most cheeses have become popular worldwide through the spread of European and Euro-American empires and culture.
The first factory for the industrial production of cheese opened in Switzerland in 1815. Credit goes to Jesse Williams, a dairy farmer from Rome, New York. Williams began making cheese in an assembly-line using the milk from neighbouring farms in 1851. By the turn of the century, scientists were producing pure microbial cultures. Pure cultures meant a standardized cheese could be produced. The mass production of cheese made it readily available to the poorer classes. Therefore, simple cost-effective storage solutions for cheese gained popularity. It remained popular in most households until the introduction of the home refrigerator in 1913. Factory-made cheese overtook traditional cheese-making during the World War II era. Since then, factories have been the source of most cheese in America and Europe.
Related Stories:
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-earliest-mediterranean-cheese-production-revealed.html
http://www.thenibble.com/REVIEWS/main/cheese/cheese2/history.asp
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0951-3574&volume=20&issue=2
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/02/25/worlds-oldest-cheese/5776373/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120530034526/http://www.moscowfood.coop/archive/cheeses.html
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