History Balkan's long and affectionate relationship with yogurt dates back to the Thracians, ancient inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula before more than 3000 years when stock-breeders placed sheep's milk in lambskin bags around their waists and fermented yogurt using their own body heat. The word 'yogurt' is derived from the words for 'thick' and 'milk' in ancient Thracian. In the early 1900s, a Bulgarian scientist called Dr. Stamen Grigorov, found an agent causing Bulgarian yogurt fermentation - a specific bacillus. Grigorov went on to pinpoint two more bacteria: a Streptobacillus and a harmful Streptoccus thermophilus which coexisted with that Lactobacillus in what appeared to be a perfect symbiosis.
