Archaeologists have mapped the use and distribution of dairy throughout prehistoric southern Europe. Since almost everyone became ill from unprocessed milk during that period, with the exception of small children, cheese, yogurt or butter were made from it to be able to digest it. The prehistoric Greek just didn't want to know anything about dairy and stuck to pork.
Dairy has not always been part of our diet. Hunter-gatherers in the Middle East switched to agriculture about 10,000 years ago. From there, groups of farmers spread westward. Innovations in Western Turkey led to the introduction of dairy cattle for dairy products. But which animals were kept in which region differs.
Archaeologists from the University of York have looked at prehistoric livestock farming from the Near East to southern Europe. For the first time, a combination has been made between the locations where leftover dairy in pottery has been found with studies into the slaughter age of cattle. For example, calves were slaughtered by dairy farmers because otherwise they would drink their mother's milk.
Dairy and beef cattle
This overview study of prehistoric dairy brings together many different local archaeological investigations. The archaeologists analyzed hundreds of jars of dairy leftovers (residue) and the bones and molars of slaughtered cattle from 84 archaeological sites. Previous research had shown that dairy processing was common in the Near East from the seventh millennium BC. The people who lived there made yogurt, butter and cheese from milk and thereby removed the lactose. Today, most people outside of Europe are lactose intolerant, and that was especially true of prehistoric humans. In other words, they got sick from drinking unprocessed milk.
New questions
However, this research not only provides an overview, it also raises questions. The Dutch archaeologist Fokke Gerritsen (Free University Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute in Turkey) is excavating prehistoric agricultural settlements in northwestern Turkey. He is not associated with this research, but explains:“The link between residue research and bone analysis and the merging of previous regional research is a step forward. But the researchers sometimes generalize where I hadn't.”
“The archaeologists are looking at Turkey, for example, and also include our Barcın Höyük excavation site in the Marmara Sea area. Barcın Höyük has early indications of intensive milk use. This is in contrast to, for example, Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, which is remarkable. But because the researchers looked at Turkey as a whole and on average a lot of dairy residues were found, this detail is lost. The few dairy remains in Çatalhöyük can be explained by the fact that the farmers who moved west developed more opportunities along the way to add to their farming livelihood.”
The migration was to the west, so that the east was more likely to be involved in agriculture and livestock farming, but not for dairy production.
Cave as stable
The archaeologists compare the raising of cattle for dairy in different places in southern Europe. It is not possible to determine whether it concerns sheep, goat or cow milk on the basis of residue research, but the type of livestock that people kept often depended on the natural environment. Goats, for example, were useful in dry mountain areas and cattle on large plains. In the north of Spain, pottery with dairy remains has been found in caves. The natural cavities in the caves formed ideal stables for livestock.
The ecological conditions alone do not explain everything. For example, this research shows that hardly any dairy remains and bones from dairy cattle can be found in northern Greece, while there was nothing wrong with the natural environment for keeping sheep or cattle. The use of dairy was therefore spread in the surrounding regions. Nevertheless, the prehistoric Greeks stuck to pigs for slaughter, as the excavated bone remains show. The archaeologists do not yet have an explanation for this, but they assume that there are cultural reasons behind it.
Gerritsen:“It almost has to be if there are no ecological objections. But it is difficult to determine what cultural reasons this could be. This also applies to our research location in the Marmara region. Dairy was dominant here early on, as was also included in this study, but pigs are again remarkably rare here. Remarkable because these are very handy animals to keep.”