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In Europe and the near East, people went from being mobile hunter-gatherers to a more settled agricultural way of life. But in Africa, nomads domesticated animals long before they literally put down roots.
Researchers know this history in part because of cave art in the Sahara. There are even drawings of full cow udders and the occasional scene of milking. But it's tough to reliably date the art, or know how prevalent milking was.
One research team studying human use of dairy had experience dating artifacts from Europe and Asia. They thus used their skills to analyze a site in the Libyan Sahara.
The scientists studied 81 pottery shards. All the pieces had some residue of animal fat. The researchers analyzed the chemical compounds and were able to determine that Africans were engaged in dairy farming by about 7,000 years ago. The study is in the journal Nature. [Julie Dunne et al., "First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium B.C."]
Evidence of milk processing shows how dairying could have been quickly adopted, even though the ability to digest lactose may still have been rare. The work should thus provide additional data for evolutionary biologists studying lactose tolerance, a key genetic development in human history.
—Cynthia Graber
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
[Also see "Pottery shards put a date on Africa’s dairying"]
[Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.]
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9 Comments
Add CommentThe Nature News link provides at least a potential answer to the obvious question of why would people milk cows before they became lactose tolerant: they might have made easier to digest low-fat yogurt...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's probably because raw milk is contaminated with probiotic fecal bacteria that we normally destroy with pasteurization ... just because it's bacteria doesn't mean it's bad for you!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI lived for three years in the Sahel. Nomads today have a number of fermented milk products that they use. Not sure why the previous comment focused on low fat yogurt. The richest yogurt I've ever eaten came from sheep's milk in Chad.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry if my lame attempt at humor offended.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Nature News link stated:
"...the findings from 7,000 years ago still predate the emergence and spread of the gene variants needed for the adult population to digest the lactose found in milk, says biomolecular archaeologist Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol, UK, who led the study with archaeological scientist Julie Dunne. He suggests that making yoghurt may have made dairy products more digestible."
The first cows were probably low-fat cows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo when did Europeans start making dairy products?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs stated by http://www.nature.com/news/pottery-shards-put-a-date-on-africa-s-dairying-1.10863
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Mark Thomas, a geneticist at University College London, calls the latest work "a very exciting finding". He speculates that mutations that allow adults to digest lactose, or lactase persistence, that arose around 6,000 years ago in Europe and later spread to Africa could have offered a unique benefit in a parching climate. Fresh milk is a reliably uncontaminated source of fluid, and people able to tolerate lactose may have stayed better hydrated than people without the gene."
From what I understand, lactose tolerance in Africa arose independently from Europe. I could be wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have no opinion - I only quoted Nature News' interview with "Mark Thomas, a geneticist at University College London..." "...that arose around 6,000 years ago in Europe and later spread to Africa..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, as stated in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_tolerance
"...it has now been shown that lactase persistence is caused by several independently occurring mutations."
A 2009 research report is also cited in the wiki entry.