When was cheese discovered?
Proposed dates for the origin of cheesemaking range from around 8000 BCE (when sheep were first domesticated) to aound 3000 BCE. The first cheese may have been made by people in the Middle East or by nomadic Turkic tribes in Central Asia. Since animal skins and inflated internal organs have, since ancient times, provided storage vessels 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 an animal, resulting in the milk being turned to curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach. There is a widely-told legend about the discovery of cheese by an Arab trader who used this method of storing milk.
