Charlemagne's first encounter with an edible rind white cheese forms one of the constructed anecdotes of Notker's Life of the Emperor. As long-distance trade collapsed, only travelers encountered unfamiliar cheeses. Cheeses diversified in Europe with locales developing their own traditions and products when Romanized populations encountered unfamiliar neighbors with their own cheese-making traditions. Cheddar was recorded around 1500 CE, Parmesan was founded in 1597, Gouda in 1697, and Camembert in 1791. Most cheeses were initially recorded in the late Middle Ages. Discovered in the Saqqara necropolis, it is around 3200 years old. In 2018, archeologists from Cairo University and the University of Catania reported the discovery of the oldest known cheese from Egypt. Preserved cheese dating from 1615 BC was found in the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, China. However, cheese was already well-known among the Sumerians.

An Arab legend attributes the discovery of cheese to an Arab trader who used this method of storing milk. In Late Bronze Age Minoan-Mycenaean Crete, Linear B tablets recorded the inventorying of cheese, (Mycenaean Greek in Linear B: ?, tu-ro later Greek: ÏÏÏÏÏ) flocks and shepherds. The earliest cheeses were sour and salty and similar in texture to rustic cottage cheese or present-day feta. Visual evidence of Egyptian cheesemaking was found in Egyptian tomb murals in approximately 2000 BC. Remains identified as cheese were found in the funeral meal in an Egyptian tomb dating around 2900 BC. The earliest evidence of cheese ( GA.UAR) is the Sumerian cuneiform texts of Third Dynasty of Ur, dated at the early second millennium BC. With less salt and acidity, the cheese became a suitable environment for useful microbes and molds, giving aged cheeses their pronounced and interesting flavors. Cheese produced in Europe, where climates are cooler than in the Middle East, required less salt for preservation. Animal skins and inflated internal organs provided storage vessels for a range of foodstuffs. It is the only form in which milk can be kept in a hot climate. Hard salted cheese is likely to have accompanied dairying from the outset. Dairying existed around 4,000 BC in the grasslands of the Sahara. Curdling milk in an animal's stomach made solid and better-textured curds, leading to the addition of rennet. For preservation purposes, cheese-making may have begun by the pressing and salting of curdled milk. The earliest direct evidence of cheese-making dates back to 5,500 BCE in Kujawy, Poland. They are of the Urnfield culture on Lake Neuchatel and date back to 6,000 BCE. Shards of pottery pierced with holes found in pile-dwellings are hypothesized to be cheese-strainers.

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