> milk fermentation can be traced back to 6000–4000 BC in India,2 and Mediterranean populations produced and consumed cheese as early as 7000 before present (BP)

I haven't come across 'before present' (other than generically) before - what's the distinction from +2000BC (i.e. 5000BC here) such that both end up used in the same sentence, making it awkward to see the relationship between dates?

In this specific case, perhaps the dates have been taken from two different sources and the author has not made the effort to convert them to a common format.

In general, dates "before present" are used for the dates determined from carbon 14 decay, which do not have an intrinsic relationship with any calendar.

A prehistoric cheese that is 7000 years old must have been dated with carbon 14, so "before present" would be the original dating, not yet converted to the Christian calendar.

Apparently if the source is written word, then BC is used as that was their source of truth. But if carbon dating or some other scientific method was used, BP is used secularly: https://chatgpt.com/share/66fe7080-5340-8000-ade3-bace6425b4...

"Before Present" seems foolish.

The document that uses it then has to then be dated.

e.g. "I warmed up dinner one minute before present" ---> said ??? minutes ago. --> is dinner still warm? who knows.

I get that "about 7,000 years ago" is still going to be "about 7,000 years" for a very long time.

Still. Seems shortsighted to communicate dates via a moving target, especially for something that's already supposed to be thinking in very long terms.

Archaeologists, you'd think, would expect their words to stick around a long, long time, why would they use a short-sighted dating mechanism?

British Petroleum would beg to differ

but it is getting silly, all these two-letter acronyms to indicate before or after the non-existing Julian or Gregorian year zero

I like BCE and ACE because it's kind of backward compatible for my brain : You find the same B and A than the previous convention and I like that the CE makes it symmetrical. Common era is also a nice name humanity can get behind whereas my brain never fully accepted Anno Dominus or whatever. If you're going to refer to Christ, do it on both sides the same for Christ's sake !

So parsable, transparent and universal acronyms for the win !

BP is commonly used for geologic and evolutionary timescales where 2000 years doesn't actually make much of a difference, but I rarely see it used for less than Holocene-spanning timelines.

Sure makes it easier to understand if your intention is to portray the age rather than the relation to specific dated historical events.

Ah that tracks, thank you. I do think it's odd in this sentence, with the two mixed (albeit we care about relating the first to history and the second to age) but clearly I'm not in the field so maybe it's just me.

(I think putting the two together makes me want to relate the latter to a time in history, to compare, even if I wouldn't in isolation, if you see what I mean.)

I followed the recent submission to HN about making your own chilli sauce. I just bottled my first batch this week and had gone down the rabbit hole of studying fermentation.

I don't think I'd otherwise have been so enthusiastic to read an article on cheese...

Home cheesemaking is super fun! Give it a go! I wrote an intro article about it a while back: https://www.smokingonabike.com/2015/09/27/cheesemaking-in-my... Gouda is a great one to start with. Camembert was my favorite, it turned out significantly tastier than what you can get at the store.

What store are you shopping at?

If you're producing cheese, beer, or any other specialty food that's better than what you can get in your local stores, you should consider transforming it into a business. You won't make much money (in cheese) but it's a fun industry and your community might just love you for it.

Spoil a good hobby by turning it into a small business. No thanks!

It's a good thing not everyone thinks like this :)

It's probably been 8-10 years since I put together the numbers for a small scale creamery (think farmer's markets, etc), but at the time in my state and its regulatory environment, I figured it was about $90K just in equipment, plus whatever you'd need for your facility build-out. You might cut a lot of corners by say, starting with ice cream over cheese or getting lucky on used equipment, but this stuff and the regulatory compliance are just not cheap.

Link?

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41154334

For a study like this I think it's a missed opportunity not to take some samples from the bodies as well and try to figure out at what point did the human vagina became dominated by Lactobacillus species, and what is the relationship between that event and agriculture? And how do those strains compare to Lactobacilli found in the reproductive tract of other animals (at lower levels)?

This is the weirdest comment I've ever upvoted on HN.

For more:

Lactobacilli Dominance and Vaginal pH: Why Is the Human Vaginal Microbiome Unique? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5143676/

Vaginal microbiome of reproductive-age women https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1002611107

Temporal Dynamics of the Human Vaginal Microbiota https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/scitranslmed.300360...

that's a pretty big allegation