I don't know for sure. I've been meaning to do more research on this topic. There is at least one very old creamery in Italy that built a brick "cave" with a stream that cools it (basically the water hits the bricks and cools it down). In Mexico, real queso Cotija is aged mostly in open huts in the mountains during the rainy season. The average temperature is 18 C. Also, I've been told that it was common (and *still* done by some producers) to age alpine cheeses at 21 C. In fact, someone told me that Parmesan *should* be aged over 20 C. There are descriptions of cheese making from Roman times where they were aging cheeses in the open air under trees for shade -- so quite a high temperature. They would stack the cheeses quite close to get higher humidity.
In hot countries like Greece, they used to age cheese in brine barrels and submerge them in the sea to stay at a constant temperature. However, in most of Europe, it turns out that there are a *lot* of volcanic caves. Apparently when the mountains in that region were first being formed, it was quite a volcanic area. So there are magma tubes that are left over. Most of the famous cheeses in Europe coincide with those volcanic caves. The volcanism has long since disappeared and now those caves are a constant 12 C, for the most part. In other areas, like Eastern Europe, the vast majority of traditional cheeses were fresh cheeses. In Asia quite a lot of cheeses were low fat and *very* dry.
Basically, my understanding is that the cheeses that survived and are popular now are mostly cool aged cheeses because they are simply better :-) Cheese in the ancient world was a way of saving milk from spoiling. The quality would have varied *wildly*. If you search the forum here, there are some sections that have old cheese making books (some 150 years old). I've read some of them. They are *terrible*. The authors clearly had *no idea* how to make good cheese :-) That's not to say that nobody did. I'm sure there was amazing cheese even in ancient times. It's just that it wasn't nearly as common as it is now.
Having said that, I've aged several cheeses at the 20 C mark and as long as you are careful about style (low moisture is good), it can make very good cheese. I've even done some bloomy rinds started for a week at 20 C and then into the fridge at about 6 C for another 5 weeks and they were *very* good. Aging cheese, especially with natural rinds, is a complex and deep topic. The general advice of 13 C is a good starting place, but there is a lot more to it than that.
