According to a new study, the first farmers from Central Europe used milk around 7,400 years ago in the early Neolithic era. This helped humans learn how to eat milk and laid the groundwork for the dairy industry.
A ground-breaking method was used in the international study, which was led by the University of Bristol and was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). It was used to date dairy fat traces that were preserved in the walls of pottery vessels that were made in the 54th century BC. Because it targets fatty acids from animal fat residues, this method is especially useful for determining when new foodstuffs were introduced in prehistoric times.
Dr. Emmanuelle Casanova, the lead author, said, "It is amazing to be able to accurately date the very beginning of milk exploitation by humans in prehistoric times." She conducted the research while completing her Ph.D. in archaeological chemistry at the University of Bristol. By introducing new food commodities like milk and milk products, agropastoralism changed the diet of prehistoric humans and continues to this day."
The Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture was the earliest Neolithic farming group in Central Europe. They came from Europe's south, east, and west. This study's findings revealed that some of the region's earliest settlers made extensive use of milk.
This work was part of the NeoMilk project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and directed by Professor Richard Evershed FRS of the University of Bristol's School of Chemistry. His team looked for food residues in over 4,300 pottery vessels from 70 LBK settlements.The results showed that the use of milk varied a lot from place to place in the region. Only 65 percent of the sites had evidence of dairy fats in ceramic vessels, which suggests that these early farmers did use milk, but not always.
The researchers created approximately thirty new radiocarbon dates by concentrating on the ceramics and sites that contained dairy residues in order to trace the beginning of LBK farmers' dairy exploitation. The earliest LBK settlements occurred in the middle of the sixth millennium BC, according to these new dates.
"This research is hugely significant because it provides new insights into the timing of major changes in human food procurement practices as they evolved across Europe," stated co-author Professor Evershed. Despite variations in the scale of activity, this provides clear evidence that dairy foods were widely distributed in the Early Neolithic."