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Humans Have Been Eating Cheese For At Least 7,500 Years

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have found conclusive evidence for the first time that humans have been making cheese since the 6th millennium BC."

25 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Wow. by roc97007 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thanks. That question has been keeping me up nights.

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    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:Wow. by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 4, Funny

      It kept early man up too, but that's because the cheese gave them nightmares.

    2. Re:Wow. by anagama · · Score: 4, Funny

      Thanks. I had thought slashdot a place for people who had an interest in the world and science. Glad I've been disabused of that notion.

      Soooo, what's your favorite episode of Jersey Shore?

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    3. Re:Wow. by Holladon · · Score: 5, Funny

      What are you, some kind of anti-cheesite?

      Talking about cheese is ALWAYS appropriate, in ANY context, and EATING cheese is even more appropriate. Anyone who says otherwise is an unrepetant philistine utterly lacking in taste and sophistication.

      Good DAY.

  2. And cutting the cheese by colin_faber · · Score: 5, Funny

    for many many eons. :)

  3. Ob... by mrsquid0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Blessed are the cheese makers.

    --
    Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
    1. Re:Ob... by oneiros27 · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of dairy products

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      Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
    2. Re:Ob... by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh I wouldn't be surprised if some day they trip over a cave in the middle of nowhere and find proto-writing that dates a hell of a lot farther back. The problem is what was most likely used was red ochre which was the first easily gathered pigment. We know this because we have found red ochre dust in ancient graves. Problem is that red ochre chips and flakes off quite easily so if you want writing to last thousands of years that ain't the stuff to be using for the paint.

      But you can take a little kid, barely able to walk and talk, hand him some finger paints and he is gonna start drawing showing that the creative spark to express is about as natural as breathing to the human animal. Since all proto-writing started off as crude shapes that represented real world objects that simply got more abstract as time went on and it was used more then if humans have a natural desire to create and express it is logical to think they would have started as soon as they had paint. Even the cave drawings we have found seem to be depicting stories, such as hunts or great battles, so who is to say there isn't some cave we haven't found yet with the first primitive writing going back long before when we thought it started?

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      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    3. Re:Ob... by timeOday · · Score: 3, Interesting
      You just reminded me of a relevant anecdote about cave paintings:

      The work of other artists didn't often reduce Pablo Picasso to a state of utter humility, but that's exactly what happened just after World War II, when he was mucking about in a cave in southwestern France. This wasn't just any cave, however -- its walls were festooned with striking pictures of horses and bulls that date from the Ice Age, all rendered with exquisite sophistication and symbolic force. Upon exiting the cave, an awed Picasso declared, "We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years."

    4. Re:Ob... by somersault · · Score: 5, Funny

      This bit is pretty funny

      The art in this cave -- called Lascaux, the Sistine Chapel of cave art -- and in many others that dot parts of France and Spain deservedly ranks with the greatest masterworks of Western art. Yet these paintings have provoked as much vexed speculation as they have wonder and awe: What was their purpose? Why are there so many pictures of animals? The painters had many colors at their disposal, but why do black and red dominate? Why are there no pictures of sky, moon or trees? What are the strange geometric signs found in many of the caves? Why are there few images of people? Just what does it all mean? Such questions have kept generations of scholars and archaeologists busy trying to find a definitive if ever elusive explanation.

      Just imagine if in 6000 years all they can find of our current generation is a memes site. Why are there all these images of cats? Why is the same image repeated so many time with different symbols over the top? Why are the animations all in 16 colours rather than a 32bit colour palette?

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      which is totally what she said
  4. I keep thinking about milking the first cow... by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Funny

    People must have looked on and though, "What they heck is he/she doing there?!? Oh my!"

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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:I keep thinking about milking the first cow... by N0Man74 · · Score: 4, Funny

      People must have looked on and though, "What they heck is he/she doing there?!? Oh my!"

      Oh, come on, that was a cheesy joke.

      Are you intolerant of lactose humor?

    2. Re:I keep thinking about milking the first cow... by abarrow · · Score: 4, Funny

      I've always wondered how to first guy to drink milk from a cow was able to get the second guy to do it.

    3. Re:I keep thinking about milking the first cow... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Funny

      It probably wasn't a cow.

      You may be right, but I personally think that the idea of it being a bull is too creepy to consider.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  5. Cheese by Ossifer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Cheese is made from milk.

  6. Re:Yes, because cheese is.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This may come as a shock to you, but some of us find our history interesting and want to learn something other than the difference between the GPL 2.0 and GPL 3.0 or how much skin some "genius" chews off his foot in public places. This is interesting because it represented a huge leap forward for humans. It meant a greater variety of food sources were available which makes eating a much more stable proposition. It also meant that people could start making longer term plans.

    When those sorts of things happen the result is time to pursue things like "knowledge" and a greater understanding of the world around us. The reason that dweebs like us are free to enrich ourselves (i.e. browse pr0n on the web) is because it takes fewer people to produce the food that we eat. Obtaining sustenance is kinda high up on the list of priorities and is something everybody either does or thinks about multiple times per day.

    So yeah, this is kind of big news. This is a case where the information is in the main stream media because it is interesting for us as well as for the normals. Rather than complain that other people are interested in nerdy shit we should be happy that other people still have enough of a sense of curiosity to learn about this instead of simply trying to reach for the remote why spilling their cheetos all over themselves as they try to turn to the cartoon channel to get away from intesmegmalectual crap like this.

    Oh yeah, and next time you see something that is not interesting to you, you might want to try not complaining about it rather than trying to belittle anyone around you who might find it interesting. You know, kinda like the assholes who are always scoffing at your interest in the latest developments in the Python code base and how it impacts the postgrsql connector class.

  7. Mod Parent Up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    +1 Insightful.

  8. To eat cheese is to be human. by goodmanj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Making and eating cheese, beer, and bread define what it is to be fully human. Any dirty ape can go club a mammoth and bring it back to its den, but to domesticate two different kinds of creatures (a mammal and a bacterium, or a grass and a yeast) and use one to rot the other and come out with something even tastier than the original? That requires massive intelligence, communication, tool use, planning, and social structure.

    (PS: if any modern cultures exist that don't eat cheese, beer, or bread, I don't mean to imply that they're not fully human. Their current environment might not have the resources to do these things, but you can bet their ancestors knew how.)

    1. Re:To eat cheese is to be human. by Holladon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      (PS: if any modern cultures exist that don't eat cheese, beer, or bread, I don't mean to imply that they're not fully human.

      Maybe not, but with no cheese, no bread, and no beer, WHAT IS THE DAMN POINT.

    2. Re:To eat cheese is to be human. by AK+Marc · · Score: 3, Informative

      All the lactose intolerant people I know can eat hard cheeses because the levels or lacose are reduced by the fermentation process. This doesn't apply to softer cheeses (especially mozzarella), so pizza is out, but swiss on a subway sandwich is fine..

    3. Re:To eat cheese is to be human. by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 4, Informative

      Lactose intolerant people can digest cheese just fine (for the most part). Milk lactose is largely drained with the liquid in the process of curdling, so cheese has little lactose left. That's likely why people used cheese before having developed lactose tolerance - because they discovered it was safe to digest.

  9. Re:I need new glasses. by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I worked at a cheese shop when I was in University and we sold cheese from all over the world. I always thought it odd that there was no cheese from China. There's Cheese from India, the middle east, europe, south america. Just about everywhere. I can't recall any cheese coming from the far east, and I've never seen cheese a chinese restaurant (except the big buffet ones that server everything from french fries to kraft dinner to General Tao's chicken to tripe) I don't recall any cheese from Africa either. I wonder why some cultures developed cheese while others didn't. Why, even if they hadn't invented it on their own, why they didn't start making it once the cultures mixed.

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    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  10. Re:Obvious geek question, answered by WebManWalking · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It was prophesied somewhere in the first 6 books of the Aeneid that Aeneas and his men would someday be so hungry, they would eat their plates.

    Somewhere in the second 6 books, there came a time, after a battle or something, when they had broken all their dinnerware. Someone had the idea to flatten out some dough, put the food on top of it and cook them all together, baking the bread and cooking the food at the same time. While they were eating, Aeneas' son Iulus said hey look everybody, we're eating our plates! Most thought it was just a joke and laughed, but the elders didn't laugh. They were amazed and recognized it as the fulfillment of prophesy made before Iulus was born.

    So when you're in Italy and you hear of some restaurant claiming to have invented pizza in medieval times, be sure to ask them, really? How was it that Virgil was able to discuss something that your restaurant hadn't invented yet? Or something similarly snarky.

  11. Re:Cheese by rishistar · · Score: 3, Funny

    Cheese is made from milk.

    Unless it's Edam, which is made backwards....

    .

    --
    Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
  12. Future digital archeologist has bad day.... by rts008 · · Score: 3

    I'm more enamored with the imagined scenario when they encounter goatse, inadvertently rickroll themselves, then, stumbling away in terror, falling into the pits of 4chan, crawling out of that, only to fall of the cliff into youtube comments.

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