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Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

sciencemag.org

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Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#91

Post by wtmt »

davchana wrote: post #42
ardit33 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not a correct point of view. Your theory would be valid, if this didn't happen in other european countries that had no marketing whatsoever or 'evil big milk' industry behind.... Almost all former communist countries, gave lots of milk of children, whenever they could as it was universally considered healthy and nutritional. Also Milk, yogurt and cheese are staples of most Mediterranean diets, since like forev…

India too, have milk & its products as a major part of diet since millions of years. All the historical & mythological literature literally says Cow as a tree which gives life, so most of the time being called as Cow-mother. Kids of few hours to people almost near end of their life & everybody between uses milk. About till 20 years ago, many pet dogs & cats & their kids too were fed milk. Buffalo milk is denser & thu…

> India too, have milk & its products as a major part of diet since millions of years.

Citation needed on “millions of years.”

Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#92

Post by bluGill »

GuB-42 wrote: post #33
pan69 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one, you can simply eat the cows It could be more resource intensive to get a new cow each time rather than milk the same cow over and over for a longer period of time.

Not denying it but in order for a cow to produce milk, it has to give birth to a calf every year. So you are getting new cows as a byproduct. Today, male calves are usually separated from their mother early and slaughtered for their meat, while females can be used to replenish stock. But if you prefer you can slaughter them later for more meat and less milk.

You get milk every day in a reasonable quantity. Before refrigeration killing a cow meant inviting the whole town to a feast at your house. Smaller animals can be eaten by one family before it spoils, but not a cow.

Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#93

Post by bluGill »

jaggederest wrote: post #56
bonoboTP wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't we have invented some way of doing all that cow-stomach stuff in a pot? Like cooking, grinding, fermenting etc, similar to how we turn other inedible plant stuff like wheat into yummy stuff like bread?

You can convert cellulose into glucose but it takes things like this (special cultured bacteria, extremely processed cellulose, and an ultrafilter to remove glucose to drive the reaction): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bit.26022080... Or strong acids and 190°C over a catalyst. Cellulose is remarkably strong, especially with lignin in the structure too. We're lucky anything can digest it at all. Whic…

My understanding is cows don't digest cellulose either. They have those stomachs to provide an environment for bacteria that can to live. Cows then digest that bacteria.

Which is digestion of course, but it isn't that cows can do it. Our large intestine does the same thing but it isn't anywhere near big enough to get a significant amount of energy from cellulose.

Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#94

Post by axaxs »

austincheney wrote: post #29

By the time Germans became familiar to the Romans milk consumption was common. The common source of dietary fats for Romans at the time was olive oil. The common source of fats for the Germans was butter which the Romans looked down upon as barbaric.

Barbaric didn't have the same meaning then as now. To the latin speakers, they made fun of the Germans as sounding like 'Bar Bar' when they talked, hence Barbarians. To call something 'Barbaric' in those times simply meant Germanic.

Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#95

Post by sangnoir »

kaesar14 wrote: post #75
sangnoir wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also harvest and consume the blood[1], without having to kill any cattle. 1. https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/cow-blood-kenya-maasai

This must be more dangerous disease transmission wise?

If you choose to consume the blood raw, then yes, it can be a vector for pathogens. However, most pastoralist societies know how to keep their herds healthy.

Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#96

Post by laumars »

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #85
jonplackett wrote: post #21

Considering how obsessed we are with giving milk to kids because it’s so healthy, it doesn’t seem that crazy it would be a massive advantage to be able to drink it.

Up to the age of around 3 we give cows milk to children because we are replacing the human milk that children up to that age would naturally be drinking...

You’re not really supposed to give cows milk to very young children. It’s either breast milk or formula. As to what age you stop that, that usually comes down to a matter of personal preference (there is plenty of research on this topic but every child weans differently and at a certain age the difference it makes starts to become fractions of a percentage)

Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#97

Post by smabie »

bluGill wrote: post #92
GuB-42 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not denying it but in order for a cow to produce milk, it has to give birth to a calf every year. So you are getting new cows as a byproduct. Today, male calves are usually separated from their mother early and slaughtered for their meat, while females can be used to replenish stock. But if you prefer you can slaughter them later for more meat and less milk.

You get milk every day in a reasonable quantity. Before refrigeration killing a cow meant inviting the whole town to a feast at your house. Smaller animals can be eaten by one family before it spoils, but not a cow.

It's relatively easy to preserve meat by making jerky or through fermentation. Cultures have known about these methods for a long long time.

Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#98

Post by [deleted] »

wtmt wrote: post #91
davchana wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India too, have milk & its products as a major part of diet since millions of years. All the historical & mythological literature literally says Cow as a tree which gives life, so most of the time being called as Cow-mother. Kids of few hours to people almost near end of their life & everybody between uses milk. About till 20 years ago, many pet dogs & cats & their kids too were fed milk. Buffalo milk is denser & thu…

> India too, have milk & its products as a major part of diet since millions of years. Citation needed on “millions of years.”

[deleted]

Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#99

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #81
User23 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bronze Age Europeans aren’t the ancestors of modern day Europeans. Thanks to modern genetic research we know that they were largely exterminated by invaders a few thousand years ago, at least on the yDNA lineages.

Do you know where modern day Europeans came from? Who were these invaders?

Indo Europeans from pontic steppe and farmers from Anatolia. Northern europeans have more ancestry in the prior.

Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk

#100

Post by adrianN »

bluGill wrote: post #92
GuB-42 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not denying it but in order for a cow to produce milk, it has to give birth to a calf every year. So you are getting new cows as a byproduct. Today, male calves are usually separated from their mother early and slaughtered for their meat, while females can be used to replenish stock. But if you prefer you can slaughter them later for more meat and less milk.

You get milk every day in a reasonable quantity. Before refrigeration killing a cow meant inviting the whole town to a feast at your house. Smaller animals can be eaten by one family before it spoils, but not a cow.

Salting, drying and various other methods for preserving meat have been known for a long time.
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