USA Today reports that the cheese aficionados were a Bronze Age people who buried their own under wood boats wrapped tightly with cowhide, creating a vacuum-packed effect better than any Ziplock bag. The mummies were pulled out of Small River Cemetery Number 5 located in the expansive Taklamakan Desert of northwestern China. Dry desert air and salty soil preserved the cheese and kept it from decaying.

The cheese was made by combining milk with a starter mixture made up of bacteria and yeast. This process differs from the present-day routine of using rennet, a substance from the guts of calf, lamb, or kid, to make cheese.