Thank God for Neolithic people.

Food historians generally agree the genesis of yogurt and other fermented milk products was discovered accidentally by Neolithic peoples living in Central Asia. These foods occured naturally due to local climate and primative storage methods. About milk. Yogurt has long been associated with good health and long life.

"Soured milk or curds have surely been consumed by many peoples from the earliest Neolithic times, but little remains as direct proof of this. They were fairly certainly used in Mesopotamia and Palestine, and possibly Egypt, and Pliny later mentions their production by barbarian'tribes."

"Milk being highly perishable, of course, a few hours would be enought to start it fermenting in the climate of the Near East. Depending on the temperature and the kind of bacteria in the air, the curds might develop into something pleasant and refershing, or something quite uneatable even by the Neolithic peoples, whose tastes were necessairly less rigid than those of their modern counterparts. The curds might also be either fine or coarse. The finer type was to develop ultimately into the sharp, creamy substance represented today by the yoghurt of the Balkans, the taetta of Scandinavia, the dahi of India. The coarser kind, strained off, would make the first soft, fresh cheese...Whatever the background to the early discoveries, however, curds, cheese, yoghurt and butter all developed into useful ways of preserving milk that was surplus to the people's immediate requirements..."

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq2.html#yogurt

-Katrina A. Tan