France's celebrated regional cheese tradition is far younger than its reputation suggests, dating back only about five or six generations. Cheeses from earlier periods are rarely found in archaeology, because they survive only under special climatic conditions. The Celts were known to make cheese, with ceramic strainers found across Celtic Europe. Analysis of the stomach contents of a 5th-century BCE miner from Hallstatt in Austria showed that he had eaten blue cheese. Those Celts had domesticated strains of Penicillium roqueforti, the mould that gives blue cheeses their veins, centuries before blue cheeses were thought to have appeared in the Middle Ages. Roman writers such as Pliny the Elder dismissed barbarian dairy foods as a sign of inferiority, a judgement that reflected cultural prejudice rather than fact.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.