If questions about the "technology of cheese-making" have been keeping you up at night, worry not: Scientists have allegedly discovered bits of pottery that more strongly suggest that cheese-making stretches back more than 7,000 years.

Or, at least, that's one of the explanations behind pottery that has been discovered near a river in Poland. Essentially, the found pieces are sieves  pottery pieces with holes in them that give them an almost colander-like appearance. It's thought that the devices were used to squeeze out the whey from milk curds, which allowed ancient Europeans to remove much of the lactose from the cheese.

That's an important bit, as adults at the time suffered from lactose intolerance and could not therefore otherwise eat large amounts of cheese prior to the straining method being employed. And the effects of this suggested cheese-making stretch beyond its obvious nutritional elements  scientists believe that the lactose-removing process used in cheese-making was one of the factors that might have popularized European dairy farming as a whole.

And several generations of dairy farming, suggests some scientists, might have contributed to, "a biological change in Europeans, the evolution about 7,500 years ago in Europe of lactase persistence  that is, keeping the enzyme lactase, which breaks down lactose, well into adulthood. This changed Western digestive capabilities," said Richard Evershed, of the University of Bristol in England, in an interview with LiveScience.

It was first thought that the hole-laden pottery pieces could have been used for other activities entirely  like beer-making, moving hot coals, or separating honey and honeycombs. However, scientists then tested these pottery fragments, and a chemical analysis uncovered traces of milk-fat residues.

"There isn't a molecule specific to cheese, but when we thought about what other dairy products might require straining, there aren't any other than cheese," Evershed said.

It's also possible that the discovered pottery isn't, itself, indicative of the first time cheese might have been strained and produced in the region. However, textiles that might have been used in the straining process even earlier wouldn't have held up nearly as well as pottery over the years, which makes it difficult to discern the true history of cheese-making in Europe.

As for the kind of cheese that might have been produced from the aforementioned process, it's thought that early crafters would have made a soft cheese  possibly as a result of the ease by which they could have done so. The specific type of cheese, like Cheddar or Brie, remains unknown.

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