--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> Dutch melk /mel&k/ with epenthetic vowel.
The epenthetic vowel is automatic in words of this phonological shape
and gives no additional information.
Now that we're on it, I've followed the discussion on milk and
related subjects with great interest and I wonder if any member of
the list has anything to say on the following problematic points:
(1)
Other mammals than cows produce milk too, notably humans, goats,
sheep and equids, such as horses and donkeys (not to speak of
milklike substances produced by plants). Chances are that even pre-
neolithic cultures had/have ways of referring to human milk. On the
Balkans, goats' milk used to be a matter of life and death for the
poorest people. As a basis for the production of cheese, sheep's milk
still holds an important position in many parts of the world,
beginning with France. Is there any reason to assume that words for
milk tend to refer primarily or preferentially to cows' milk?
(2)
One of the disadvantages of cows' milk as compared with goats' and
sheep's milk is that humans are allergic to it. For cows' milk to
become important in the diet of a group, the people in question first
have to develop resistance to the allergenic component in it. Does
anybody know when that resistance started developing and where?
(3)
Some members of the list have equated the rise of cows' milk as an
element in the diet of certain groups with the moment cattle were
domesticated. To me that seems rash because there may well have been
a considerable time lag even apart from the time lag dictated by the
need to get rid of our allergy to cows' milk. Does anybody have any
information on that? Recently it has become possible to identify
organic substances in containers, pots and receptacles that are
millennia old, so one expects information about the subject to be
pouring in.
(4)
Domesticated cattle were among the beasts the earliest European food
producers brought with them when they immigrated from Turkey not long
before or after 7000 BC. Is there any information how long cattle had
been domesticated by that time? I vaguely recall reading that there
have been at least three "domestication events" of cattle: one
somewhere in western Asia, one a lot more to the east and one in
Africa. Is that still the understanding of the experts?
Willem