In the absence of any direct evidence, the relative importance of meat and dairy productions to Neolithic prehistoric Mediterranean communities has been extensively debated. Here, we combine lipid residue analysis of ceramic vessels with osteo-archaeological age-at-death analysis from 82 northern Mediterranean and Near Eastern sites dating from the seventh to fifth millennia BC to address this question. The findings show variable intensities in dairy and nondairy activities in the Mediterranean region with the slaughter profiles of domesticated ruminants mirroring the results of the organic residue analyses. The finding of milk residues in very early Neolithic pottery (seventh millennium BC) from both the east and west of the region contrasts with much lower intensities in sites of northern Greece, where pig bones are present in higher frequencies compared with other locations. In this region, the slaughter profiles of all domesticated ruminants suggest meat production predominated. Overall, it appears that milk or the by-products of milk was an important foodstuff, which may have contributed significantly to the spread of these cultural groups by providing a nourishing and sustainable product for early farming communities.

In European and many African, Middle Eastern and Southern Asian populations lactase persistence (LP) is the most strongly selected monogenic trait to have evolved over the last 10,000 years 1 . While LP selection and prehistoric milk consumption must be linked, considerable uncertainty remains concerning their spatiotemporal configuration and specific interactions 2,3 . We provide detailed distributions of milk exploitation across Europe over the last 9k years using c. 7,000 pottery fat residues from >550 archaeological sites. European milk use was widespread from the Neolithic period onwards but varied spatially and temporally in intensity. Surprisingly, comparison of model likelihoods indicates that LP selection varying with levels of prehistoric milk exploitation provides no better explanation of LP allele frequency trajectories than uniform selection since the Neolithic. In the UK Biobank 4,5 cohort of ~500K contemporary Europeans, LP genotype was only weakly associated with milk consumption and did not show consistent associations with improved fitness or health indicators. This suggests other hypotheses on the beneficial effects of LP should be considered for its rapid frequency increase. We propose that lactase non-persistent individuals consumed milk when it became available, but that under particular conditions and microbiological milieux this was disadvantageous, driving LP selection in prehistoric Europe. Comparison of model likelihoods indicates that population fluctuations, settlement density and wild animal exploitationproxies for these driversprovide better explanations of LP selection than the extent of milk exploitation. These findings offer new perspectives on prehistoric milk exploitation and LP evolution.