They Found 3,600-Year-Old Cheese in China—It’s Kefir!

By Nik, founder of 東歐嚴選｜kefir.link and former chef · First published 28 November 2024 · Updated 4 November 2026

In 2003, archaeologists in the deserts of western China opened a coffin shaped like an upturned boat. Inside lay a young woman, and across her neck lay small, hard, yellowish lumps. It took scientists 21 years to say for certain what they were: kefir cheese, made about 3,500 years ago. It is the oldest known cheese in the world. And it was made the same way you can make kefir at home today, with living grains.

The short answer

• Where: the Xiaohe cemetery, a Bronze Age burial ground in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, western China.
• What: lumps of cheese laid on the necks and chests of people buried there. The dry desert kept them for thousands of years.
• 2014: a protein study showed that the cheese was made with bacteria and yeasts, the way kefir is made.
• 2024: an ancient-DNA study in the journal Cell found the same bacterium and yeast that live in kefir grains today.
• The age: the Cell paper dates the cheese to about 3,500 years ago. News reports round it to 3,600.
• Today: new kefir grains only grow from existing grains, so every jar of kefir continues a line of grains passed from kitchen to kitchen.

Get live kefir grainsTry original milk kefir

How we checked this story

• The 2014 protein study: Yang and colleagues, Journal of Archaeological Science, volume 45, with the press releases of the two Max Planck institutes that did the analysis.
• The 2024 DNA study: Liu and colleagues, Cell, volume 187, its published summary and the Cell Press release.
• News reports: National Geographic, Science News, the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Liberty Times. Each is linked next to the sentence it supports.
• Kefir grains today: a scientific review of kefir grains and our own kitchen, where we keep grains going every day.

A cemetery in the desert

Xiaohe means “small river”. The cemetery lies west of Lop Nur in Xinjiang, at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin.

• Found by a hunter: a local hunter named Ördek came across the site around 1910. In 1934 he guided the Swedish explorer Folke Bergman there, who gave it the name Xiaohe.
• Dug in the 2000s: archaeologists from Xinjiang began large excavations at the end of 2002. The cemetery holds about 330 graves, and 167 have been uncovered.
• Boat-shaped coffins: each coffin is made of two planks set over the body, like an upturned boat, covered with cowhide.
• Kept by the desert: the dry air of the Taklamakan preserved the bodies and even the eyelashes of one famous mummy, the “Beauty of Xiaohe” (National Geographic).
• The cheese: pebble-sized, yellowish lumps lay around the necks and on the chests of several of the dead. A coffin opened in 2003 held a young woman with cheese across her neck (Liberty Times).

The archaeologists could see it was a dairy food. What kind of dairy food was the question that took two research teams to answer.

2014: the proteins point to kefir

The archaeologist Yang Yimin sent the first crumbs to a laboratory in Dresden, Germany, led by Andrej Shevchenko. The team read the proteins left in the cheese, one by one (Max Planck Institute, Dresden).

• Milk proteins: the lumps held milk proteins, including beta-lactoglobulin, the main whey protein in the milk of cows, goats and sheep.
• Bacteria and yeasts: the proteins showed that the milk had been fermented with a mix of bacteria and yeasts, the way kefir is made.
• Made without rennet: the people of Xiaohe soured their milk with living microbes, so they needed no rennet from the stomach of a young animal (Max Planck Society).
• The date: the cemetery dates to about 1980 to 1450 BC (Warinner and colleagues, 2014).

The paper, “Proteomics evidence for kefir dairy in Early Bronze Age China”, appeared in the Journal of Archaeological Science in 2014. The Dresden team called the crumbs the oldest cheese remains ever found.

2024: the DNA confirms it

The geneticist Fu Qiaomei and her team in Beijing designed their own tools to fish the microbes’ DNA out of the cheese. The work took them more than 11 years (University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences).

• Three samples from three graves: each about the size of a bottle cap. Squeezed between the fingers, they felt like dense dust (Science News).
• Cow and goat milk: two samples were most likely made from cow’s milk and the third from goat’s milk. The people of Xiaohe kept each kind of milk in its own batch.
• The kefir bacterium: the team found Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens, a bacterium that lives in kefir grains today.
• The kefir yeast: they also found the yeast Pichia kudriavzevii, which is also found in kefir grains today (Cell Press).
• A genome from the Bronze Age: the team rebuilt 92 percent of the ancient bacterium’s genome. Their probes raised its share of the DNA from under 1 percent to as much as 80 percent.

The study, “Bronze Age cheese reveals human-Lactobacillus interactions over evolutionary history”, was published online in Cell on 25 September 2024 (study summary). It dates the cheese to about 3,500 years ago. Fu Qiaomei calls it the oldest known cheese sample in the world.

A second road for kefir

Kefir has long been linked with the Caucasus mountains. Researchers had traced its spread from the Northern Caucasus to Europe and other regions. The Xiaohe cheese adds a second road.

• Two families of the bacterium: today’s Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens falls into two main groups, one linked to Russia and one to Tibet.
• Xiaohe belongs with Tibet: the ancient strain is more closely related to the Tibetan group. The team compared it with 15 modern samples to build the family tree.
• From Xinjiang to East Asia: the study describes an additional route for kefir, from Xinjiang into inland East Asia.
• Kept alive for 3,500 years: Fu Qiaomei says kefir culture has been maintained in Xinjiang since the Bronze Age.

Science News puts it simply: kefir can only be made from existing kefir cultures. That is why the bacteria in the grains can show how kefir travelled.

The story in dates

From their kitchen to yours

A kefir grain is a small, springy cluster of lactic acid bacteria and yeasts. They live together in a soft gel of protein and a sugar called kefiran. Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens, the bacterium found at Xiaohe, is one of the microbes that makes this kefiran (review).

New grains grow only from existing grains. Every grain in a kitchen today grew from an older grain that someone kept alive and fed with fresh milk. Read more in Kefir Grains 101.

Keeping that line going at home takes a few minutes a day:

1. Put the grains in fresh milk. Cover the jar with kitchen paper and a rubber band, and leave it at room temperature, ideally about 24°C, for about 24 hours. Keep the grains below 35°C.
2. Strain the kefir. Pour it through a plastic or stainless steel strainer. Drink the kefir or put it in the fridge.
3. Start again straight away. Put the grains straight from the strainer into fresh milk. The full method is in How to make kefir at home.
4. Watch them grow. Growth shows within 1–3 weeks. When you have more grains than you need, keep a small spare portion.
5. Pass some on. Give extra grains to a friend in a little fresh milk, so the line continues in another kitchen.

A 3,500-year-old tradition, in a glass today.

Our original milk kefir is fermented with living kefir grains, where lactic acid bacteria and yeasts work together, and has no added sugar. Every 100 g contains 4.0 g of protein and 110 mg of calcium; calcium helps maintain the normal development and health of bones and teeth.

Shop original milk kefirGet live kefir grains

Frequently asked questions

How old is the Xiaohe kefir cheese?

The 2024 Cell study dates it to about 3,500 years ago. The mummies are about 3,300 to 3,600 years old, and most news reports say 3,600 years.

Where was the cheese found?

At the Xiaohe cemetery, west of Lop Nur in the Tarim Basin, Xinjiang, in western China. It lay on the necks and chests of people buried there.

How do scientists know it is kefir?

In 2014, proteins showed milk, lactic acid bacteria and yeasts. In 2024, DNA showed Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens and Pichia kudriavzevii, two microbes that live in kefir grains today.

What milk did they use?

Cow’s milk and goat’s milk. The DNA shows that each kind of milk was fermented in its own batch.

Is it the oldest cheese in the world?

Yes. The researchers call it the oldest known cheese sample ever found.

Can I keep kefir grains going the same way?

Yes. Put the grains in fresh milk, strain after about 24 hours, and put them straight into fresh milk again. Healthy grains keep growing, and you can share the extra with friends.

Live kefir grainsSee them