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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

#131

Post by olau »

rsj_hn wrote: post #120
rrobukef wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, even with preserving there is too much meat. DDG says one cow has about 250 kg of meat. This is enough to feed a family for over a year. There is also enough edible meat that cannot be preserved: the head, some organs. These are prepared immediately, hence the feast for the village.

sure, so 400 families can support a population that kills a cow per day, eats some of the meat in the family and sells the rest of the meat.

How much land would those 400 families need to feed their cows?

I think most prehistoric settlements were small. Around where I live, perhaps 5-20 houses.

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

#132

Post by dalbasal »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

It doesn't really surprise me much that lactase persistence should be so strongly selected for in a relatively short period of time. Cows and other ungulates possess a rather magical ability to turn something that can't be digested by humans (cellulose) into something that can (milk). Opening up the huge caloric and nutrient resource of cellulose to humans in a relatively replenishable way had to be a giant benefit t…

Maybe not surprising biologically, considering the role of nutrition as a limiting factor on human (and most organisms) population. Say an ancient culture developed a lifestyle heavily fishing relient. If the resources (fish) were plentiful, it's not hard to imagine fish becoming a staple diet fast and subsequent adaptations to the nutritional pros and cons emerging within just a few generations.

OTOH, milk requires domestication of mammals. For milk to be a staple (as it is among many existing pastoralist cultures), processing and preservation techniques (yoghurt, cheese, etc) need to be developed. It's (IMO) a pretty complex assortment of dependant cultural and biological adaptations in both humans and animals.

Genetic evidence like this suggests that the adaptations spread fast. It also suggests a substantial role played by pastoralist cultures in neolithic and bronze age prehistory.

Neolithic history is tends to emphasize grain agriculture. These people left more artifacts. They left large settlements (eg Jericho) for us to dig up. They became urban "civilizations." Common, orthodox interpretation (eg the common marxist narrative) focuses on these a lot. Complex relationships between economics & social structure are inferred. etc.

Pastoralism gets a lot less attention. They left few artifacts, fewer settlements. They weren't urban, making them less interesting to most 19th and 20th century historians. Yet, we have lots of evidence that they were both many and significant.

Some of the earliest histories we have (Sumerian, 1st Dynasty Egyptian) suggests all sorts of contact, cultural exchange and conflict with large populations of pastoralists. Ancient historians attributed many innovations in weapons (eg chariots, compound bows) and other technological advancements (eg wheels) to pastoralist cultures.

While speculative, I'd also suggest that the earliest "nations" may have been pastoralists in the Yuval Noah Harari sense of the term. This also makes them the first civilizations in the same sense. They were also likely to have been innovators and originators of long distance trade and communication.

None of that is proved by the spread of lactose tolerance, but it does suggest that pastoralism was a very significant lifestyle in the lead up to pre classical cultures.

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

#133

Post by dalbasal »

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.

Look at modern, traditional pastoralist cultures. Most rely on dairy for staple protein. Very few animals are kept for meat alone, in a traditional economic context. Most require several uses (plowing, transport, textiles, dairy, meat, currency) to justify their care.

Some cultures even outlaw eating beef, and most slaughter mostly when they don't have enough feed or for special occasions.

Dairy is absolutely essential to the nutritional economy of most pastoralist cultures that we know about. As you say, lactose persistence is not an absolute barrier... but I think this sort of evidence suggests that dairy is a very significant part of human history. Pastoralism with or without milk is a different beast.

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

#134

Post by irrational »

rrobukef wrote: post #116
adrianN wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, even with preserving there is too much meat. DDG says one cow has about 250 kg of meat. This is enough to feed a family for over a year. There is also enough edible meat that cannot be preserved: the head, some organs. These are prepared immediately, hence the feast for the village.

A modern family with two kids or an agrarian family with a ton of kids? Plus the agrarian family is doing so much manual labor that they can probably eat the modern family under the table.

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

#135

Post by eru »

sangnoir wrote: post #95
kaesar14 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's for the vector from cow to human. But cutting into your cow also makes it more likely for your cow to catch something, doesn't it?

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

#136

Post by eru »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #127
Spooky23 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Milk isn’t dairy. Because it’s a liability in many parts of the world without abundant fodder or cold climate. Milk can be dangerous without refrigeration in hours. Dairy is much more than milk. You can consume cheese, yogurt, butter and many other products where the process of making the dairy product eliminates lactose. Think about things like cooking oil — an impossible thing to manufacture efficiently if you lack…

Lard was the "cooking oil" of choice before modern industrial production shifted to seed oils.

And it's still great.

(Though to be sure, lard was the cooking fat of choice in much but not all of the world.)

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

#137

Post by eru »

njarboe wrote: post #59
rwh86 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard cheeses contain almost no lactose; it's consumed by bacteria during the maturation process.

A way to store a surplus food that contains high protean and fat is another huge benefit of dairy. Hard cheeses can be stored for years in the right conditions and these conditions are achievable for ancient people (caves).

And if done right, the cheese becomes tastier as it ages.

Not as important today, but more important back then: aging your cheese also concentrates the salt. Salty foods are tasty.

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

#138

Post by scns »

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.

In conventional agriculture, cows whose milkproduction declines get slaughtered, even when pregnant with a developed fetus inside.

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

#139

Post by scns »

sangnoir wrote: post #74
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.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people#Diet

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

#140

Post by feintruled »

Interesting factoid about lactose tolerance and geography - in Ireland we are big milk drinkers. Growing up I hadn't even heard of anyone being intolerant. And indeed Ireland has the lowest incidence in the world: https://milk.procon.org/lactose-intolerance-by-country/

I wonder how this came to be?

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