People love milk from 6000 BC

The new study shows that people start taking cow's milk and other types of milk as well as processing and storing dairy products from before the original 2000 year.

A group of scientists studied thousands of ceramic fragments from many locations throughout the Near East region (near the cave) and the Balkans, they tried all the samples to find traces of fat milk. They discovered that milk had been used and processed since the 7th millennium BC.

Previous evidence of milk use was from the fifth millennium, although cows, sheep and goats have been domesticated since the eighth millennium.

Traces of fat in milk can exist on ceramics, even after being buried for thousands of years, because of hydrophobic fat, they are insoluble in water, and are produced in large quantities, team leaders Richard Evershed, of the University of Bristol, UK, said.

Because pottery has a rough surface, if you store or cook food with a dish, 'organic substances will seep into them quickly,' Evershed told LiveScience.

People love milk from 6000 BC.(Photo: farm4.static.flickr)

The residue does not clearly demonstrate the presence of milk, as they decompose very quickly, but instead show processed dairy products, such as butter, yogurt, liquid butter, and can be cheese, although the cheese is easily modified by bacteria and may leave no trace.

Evershed and colleagues were surprised to find milk residues in most places in Anatolia (occupying most of Turkey today), outside the fertile region of Fertile Cresent, where agriculture was first developed. .

To find out why dairy products seem more important in Anatolia than in other locations, the team looked at animal bones and found a correlation between the number of dairy cows and the prevalence of residues. .

'There seems to be a link between the importance of cattle, dairy and dairy products , ' says Evershed, a general situation in the world in which dairy cows are a source. main dairy products.

Evershed said that the area in Anatolia around the sea of ​​Marmara is said to be very fertile, and therefore 'there may be good conditions for raising cattle'.

Anatolia lying outside Fertile Cresent also shows that many domesticated animals do not develop in a stable sequence and some activities, such as milk production, develop in time when conditions are over. muon.

The results of the study are detailed in the August issue of the journal Nature.