It likely didn’t come in a wheel. That hadn’t been invented yet.

But new research released Wednesday by the journal Nature provides solid evidence that prehistoric humans were rolling out cheese some 7,000 years ago.

“I’m really chuffed about the way this research has gone,” says Richard Evershed, a University of Bristol biochemist and senior study author.

Evershed might have a right to be excited. His team’s analysis of pottery found in what is now modern-day Poland takes the time of human cheese-making back two millennia from its previously pegged date.

“Prior to this in the prehistoric period there was actually no evidence (of cheese-making) whatsoever,” Evershed says.

“So you’re gong to be at least a couple of thousand years earlier, because (prior evidence of the earliest cheese-making) is going to be somewhere where there’s a written record.”

Writing during the time of Evershed’s cheese-making — which was located near the Kuyavia region of north central Poland — was yet to be developed, as was the wheel, he says.

“It’s really early in the evolution of the technologies that we recognize as those associated with human civilizations,” he says.

“They haven’t (even) got metal working yet.”

To prove the presence of cheese-making among the so-called Linearbandkeramik Culture farmers, the researchers used a combination of scientific gadgetry and Holmesian deduction.

First they looked at a slew of unglazed, prehistoric pottery shards, which were pocked with tiny holes that made them look like modern-day cheese strainers.

“You can go on the Internet and buy plastic ones which have similar-sized holes if you wanted to make cheese,” Evershed says.

Having pegged the pottery shards as pieces of suspected cheese strainers, the researchers then took small fragments of them, pulverized these up and chemically removed any fat particles they might have contained. These were then shot through a gas chromatograph, which could separate and detect the tell-tale molecules of milk fat.

“It shows you they were using those vessels for something quite specific and it was unequivocally processing milk product,” Evershed says.

“And you’ve got the other piece of reasoning, which is what other milk processing activity do you have that requires you to separate by straining? There isn’t any. It’s cheese.”

A plethora of cattle bones found in the region — low-lying land perfect for dairy herding — also showed the cheese was being made from cow’s milk, Evershed says.

Royal Ontario Museum archeologist Robert Mason says the study puts to rest a debate about these particular ceramic shards that had been baffling his community for decades.

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Mason, a pottery expert, also says the study may provide a method for determining the function of other ancient ceramic vessels under debate.

He also says the research can help explain the distribution and prevalence of lactose intolerance around Europe and other parts of the world.

Evershed says there’s no way of knowing what kind of cheese was being made from the curds being strained out with the pre-bronze age pottery.

It could well have been a pungent variety, however.

Evershed says the Neolithic cattle herders may well have wrapped their curds in animal intestines, where it would have picked up gut bacteria as it cured.

Though cheese-making showed there was surprising sophistication amongst these earliest of European farmers, the process itself is relatively easy, Evershed says.

“You just warm some whole milk up to just below boiling and let it cool a little bit,” he says.

Add a bit of lemon, remove, strain and kneed the curds and you have the precursor of cheese.

Cheese, like early beers and meads, would have given its prehistoric makers a means of preserving nutrients that would otherwise have spoiled.

“It’s pretty amazing that they would have realized that you could take the milk from a cow, you could do some sort of a chemical treatment or enzymatic treatment to precipitate the curds,” he says.