Udderly Ancient: How Long Have We Been Drinking Someone Else's Milk

ancient milk

Your lactose intolerant friends are normal, you dairy-eaters are just Lactase Persistent. 

By definition, mammals drink milk from their mothers. In fact, the whitish liquid predates the existence of mammals all together and likely originated around 310 million years ago in prehistoric animals called synapsids. Mammals are only 160 million years old. Primitive milk, one theory suggests, was originally secreted in order to keep soft eggs moist, pliable, and well-nourished. (Oftedal)

Human babies, the kind that breastfeed for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, have no issue digesting milk.  Infants naturally produce an enzyme called lactase which digests the sugar in milk, or lactose. As humans age and become omnivorous, the body stops producing the enzyme, making it it difficult to digest dairy. In their maturity, adult humans are not naturally equipped to consume from the udder–until culture gets involved. 

If our biology revolts against lactose, how have we been drinking milk for over 8,500 years? The answer is two-fold: we changed the milk to suit us, we changed ourselves to suit the milk.

ancient egyptian milk
Egyptians drank milk by the First Dynasty (3200-2900 B.C.E.) from Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 It isn’t so hard to change milk, just look around. We have yogurt and cheese, ice cream and kefir. We even have airag, alcoholic mare’s milk from Mongolia. At first glance, these dairy products seem to enhance the gustatory properties of otherwise plain milk, but they also alter its chemical properties. Processes like fermentation and curdling help to reduce or eliminate the lactose content in pure milk. To a certain degree, our ancestors developed cheeses and yogurts so that they would have fewer complications from lactose intolerance. 

Ancient potsherds contain chemical evidence that some of the earliest milk was processed into secondary products like cheese. These technologies and food processes would have accelerated the rate of adoption of milk-drinking. It is easy to learn how to make cheese, it is hard to teach the body to digest lactose. 

Changing ourselves is considerably harder than changing milk. Nevertheless lactase persistence is one of the foremost examples of how culture can directly influence biology. The human proclivity for milk-drinking has hardcoded itself in some genes.

In pastoral societies such as those of Northern Europe, India, and the Ancient Sahara, generations upon generations relied on milk for sustenance. These peoples developed a genetic adaptation on the lactase gene (LCT) which made their bodies produce the enzyme into adulthood. (Warinner) Our lactose intolerant friends are likely descended from people who didn’t carry the genetic adaptation. 

prevalence of Lactase Persistent
Global prevalence of Lactase Persistent genes from Joe Roe, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

We can get an idea of whose ancestors drank milk based on whether or not a population has Lactase Persistence genes. This method has its drawbacks. Germans, for example, only developed lactase persistence around 850 years ago. (Bleasdale) Lactase persistence is also not descriptive of the most ancient instances of dairy culture. These peoples innovated agriculture and nutrition but did not have the benefit of inheriting the genetic adaptation. To explore the oldest milk drinkers we need something else.

Some studies rely on chemical analysis of pottery while others use something called dental calculus. Either way, the goal is to see how long ago animal milk entered the human diet. At the earliest stages, animal milk may have been a ritual and religious offering, but regular consumption would appear in the archaeological record.

In the Sahara (which used to have more rain that it does now), ancient Africans lived as shepherds of cows, sheep, and goats. A combination of evidence converges on the fact that Libyans were drinking cow’s milk at least 6,000 years ago! (Simoons) There are cattle bones, human teeth coated in milk proteins, and pots suitable for dairy processing. One cave drawing at Wadi Teshuinat even depicts milking practices.

Evershed claims an earlier antiquity for milk drinking in northwestern Anatolia. In his study, he analyzes pottery from across the Near East and finds compelling evidence to suggest that cattle-herding peoples in Anatolia drank milk as early as 7,000 BCE. Where cattle bones were more common, milk drinking was most likely. Importantly, the Fertile Crescent where herd animals were first domesticated was likely not the first location of dairying.

Whoever came up with the idea of drinking milk was a visionary. Consuming the milk of other mammals had wide-reaching impacts on human life, from our reproductive rhythm to our agricultural process. We could wean children from human breastmilk at will. We could obtain food without slaughtering our livestock. 

Milk provides clean liquid for drinking as over 80% of the white liquid is water. It nourishes with sugars, fats, and proteins as well as calcium, potassium, and vitamin B. Once we learn to cope with the pesky lactose, milk is a very substantial foodstuff. It is no wonder that societies quickly adapted strategies to cope with lactose intolerance in order to enjoy the nourishment our cows provided. 

ancient milk

Sources Cited

Bleasdale, Madeleine, et al. “Ancient proteins provide evidence of dairy consumption in eastern Africa.” Nature communications 12.1 (2021): 1-11.

Dunne, Julie, et al. “First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium BC.” Nature 486.7403 (2012): 390-394.

Evershed, Richard P., et al. “Earliest date for milk use in the Near East and southeastern Europe linked to cattle herding.” Nature 455.7212 (2008): 528-531.

Oftedal, Olav T. “The evolution of milk secretion and its ancient origins.” Animal 6.3 (2012): 355-368.

Simoons, Frederick J. “The antiquity of dairying in Asia and Africa.” Geographical Review (1971): 431-439.

Warinner, Christina, et al. “Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus.” Scientific reports 4.1 (2014): 1-6.

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