The image of our cavemen ancestors as wild hunters who enjoyed no better meal than flesh torn from their latest kill has been dented by new archaeological research. Chemical analysis of 6000-year-old pottery shards shows ancient Britons also had a taste for cow鈥檚 milk and goat鈥檚 cheese.
鈥淭his is the first direct evidence for widespread dairying at prehistoric sites anywhere in the world,鈥� says Richard Evershed, professor of biogeochemistry at the University of Bristol, UK. Archaeologists had previously uncovered a few objects that suggested dairying, such as suspected cheese strainers, but nothing unambiguous.
Until now, the earliest proof of dairying was a picture of a Sumerian frieze in Baghdad Museum showing milking 4500 years ago. 鈥淎nd in Britain we had no proof till pictures and writing in Roman times,鈥� Evershed told 快猫短视频.
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Second revolution
The findings will shed a new light on the diet, health and economics of Neolithic humans. Humans first domesticated animals for their meat about 10,000 years ago, probably in the Middle East. Evershed thinks a second revolution, in which animals were used for milk and wool, may have happened around 7000 years ago.
鈥淏ut we don鈥檛 have any proof. Our next research project is to go to the Middle East to try and find it,鈥� he says.
Evershed uncovered the early taste for dairy products by looking for remains of animal fat absorbed in broken crockery. The fragments had been dug up from 14 sites across Britain, dated between 6000 and 1500 years ago.
鈥淭he breakthrough came when we discovered recently that, due to a quirk in the metabolism of ruminants, you can tell which fats are from dairy products and which from meat,鈥� he says.
Dairy products contain fractionally less of the stable isotope carbon-13 and slightly more carbon-12. Evershed applied the technique to almost 1000 pieces of pottery from the sites and found evidence of dairy products at every one.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0335955100)