The full news reports can be found at:
http://www.sciencenews.org/20030201/fob1.asp
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2699547.stm
'The new chemical data set the stage for researchers to look for milk-fat
residues on pottery from comparably ancient sites in central Europe, adds
archaeologist Peter Bogucki of Princeton University. Clues to dairying at
these locations consist of large numbers of adult female cattle bones and
ceramic strainers possibly used in cheese production, Bogucki says.
Evershed and Payne, with Sherratt, are now searching for milk-fat residues on
pottery from about a dozen prehistoric sites in southeastern Europe, Turkey,
and the Middle East. Payne suspects that Middle Eastern villagers milked farm
animals at least 7,000 years ago. Various farming practices developed slowly
there and then spread into Europe as a "package," he speculates.
At this point, it's hard to know precisely where dairying and milk
consumption began and how they spread from those origins, Sherratt notes.
"The milk story is getting fuzzier and more interesting," he says.'
...............................................
'The oldest direct evidence for the existence of dairy farming has been
discovered in the UK. It is based on a chemical analysis of milk fat
deposits left on pottery fragments found to be 6,500 years old....
The researchers examined each sherd for evidence of fats from milk or meat.
Although the fats are chemically very similar, milk fats contain different
ratios of carbon atoms (carbon-12 and carbon-13) compared to meat fats.
This is a direct outcome of the way mammary glands in ruminant animals such
as sheep and cows process the carbon in their diet to make milk.
The results of the study showed clearly that even the oldest sherds had come
into contact with milk, indicating the practice of dairying in Britain goes
back beyond 4,500 BC
Next step
Scientists believe humans began to move away from a society based on hunting
and gathering to one built around farming more than 10,000 years ago.
The new agrarian technologies are likely to have originated in the Near East,
before spreading north and west. But establishing when and where exactly
dairy husbandry started has not been easy.
Archaeologists have relied on artefacts such as ancient cheese strainers to
get some clues as to its origin. There are even some pictorial records dating
to about 3,000 or 4,000 BC that suggest the practice was going on in Egypt
and the Sahara.
And the discovery of animal bones of greater age at archaeological sites also
hints at systematic milking, as it is younger animals (even today) that tend
to be kept for their meat.
"It is clear that by the time farming reached Britain, milk was already an
important commodity," said Dr Mark Copley, the lead researcher on the PNAS
study.
"The next big step is to trace the line back through the earlier communities
to find the origin of dairying. "If one was to take a pot from, say, the
Mediterranean, it is more than likely we would find older evidence. This is
what we are trying to do now.'