Cultured Milk

Abstract

Animal milk use started between ca. 9000 and 6500 BCE at the onset of the Neolithic in Southwest Asia, and it subsequently accompanied the spread of farming into Europe from 6800/6700 BCE onward. Against the background of lambing seasons, climate, and technology, it is likely that prehistoric adults consumed not fresh milk but variants of lactose-reduced fermented milks and cheeses. While this is well in line with genetic lactose intolerance prevailing in the Neolithic, the strong selective force behind the regional emergence of genetic lactase persistence in later prehistory is still unknown. In a synopsis of the currently available archaeological data as well as knowledge of recent traditional dairying and microbiology, in this paper we trace the role of fermented dairy products in the prehistory of Southwest Asia and Europe, address possible spillover effects with other fermented products such as bread, beer, and wine, and outline working hypotheses for future research. Particular attention is drawn to the distinction between meso-and thermophilic fermentation as a possible clue as to the reasons for the strong selective advantage of lactase persistence.Online enhancements: supplementary table. RetrospectiveIn an enjoyable yet largely under-received paper, archaeologist Frances James (1975) explored the significance of fermented dairy products for the culinary and genetic history of the Near East and Europe and beyond. From the observation of a divide between sour milk-based dairy in Europe and yoghurt-based dairy in the Near East, she concluded that these two traditional types of dairy fermentation are the result of different temperature conditions in the two regions: yoghurt is fermented at ca. 407 to 507C, while sour milk requires much lower ambient temperatures. Moreover, James proposed that, since the Neolithic and the practice of dairying originated in the Near East, thermophilic yoghurt was the original dairy product of the Neolithic that-only during the spread to Europe-gave way to mesophilic variants. While she mentions that yoghurt serves to circumvent maldigestion in commonly lactase-deficient Near Eastern adults and explicitly links the consumption of fresh milk to lactase persistence, she only implicitly links mesophilic fermentation to the latter two traits.Since the reasons behind the strong positive selection toward lactase persistence in prehistory remain puzzling (Gerbault et al. 2009(Gerbault et al. , 2015Segurel et al. 2020), such a connection seems well worth looking at in more detail. Biogeochemical and archaeogenetic approaches now enable us to trace prehistoric dairying more closely (Craig et al. 2005;Evershed et al. 2008;Greenfield and Arnold 2015;Hendy et al. 2018a; Kind-stedt 2012;Warinner et al. 2014), and microbiological research has contributed to our understanding of food-fermenting microbes as domesticates with a potentially deep history (Mira, Pushker, and Rodriguez-Valera 2006). Using data from zoology, microbiology, and ethnography as sources for analogy, in this paper we sum...

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