The oldest direct evidence for the existence of dairy farming has been
discovered in the UK.
It is based on a chemical analysis of milk fat deposits left on pottery
fragments found to be 6,500 years old.

It is clear that by the time farming reached Britain, milk was already an
important commodity

Dr Mark Copley, Bristol University

Although the practice of milking animals for food was undoubtedly
developed elsewhere and then introduced into Britain, this is the
earliest time for which researchers have been able to show definitively
that it was going on.

According to the chief scientist of English Heritage, Dr Sebastian Payne,
the discovery demonstrates once again the sophistication of Neolithic
society.

He told BBC News Online: "Don't underestimate prehistoric man; it is a
mistake to think he was simple and stupid. This work tells us that the
diet of the time was far more varied than is sometimes thought."

He added: "We can't be certain but it was likely that prehistoric man
converted the milk to cheese or butter because these are products you can
store and will last through the year."

Carbon atoms

Dr Payne and colleagues from Bristol University report their pot analysis
in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

They examined the chemical residues on 950 potsherds - ancient broken
dishes - from 14 archaeological sites right across the UK.

The potsherds were taken from all over the UK
But the oldest fragments were sourced from Neolithic digs at Hambledon
Hill in Dorset, the Eton Rowing Lake in Buckinghamshire and Windmill Hill
in Wiltshire.

The researchers examined each sherd for evidence of fats from milk or
meat.

Although the fats are chemically very similar, milk fats contain
different ratios of carbon atoms (carbon-12 and carbon-13) compared to
meat fats.

This is a direct outcome of the way mammary glands in ruminant animals
such as sheep and cows process the carbon in their diet to make milk.

The results of the study showed clearly that even the oldest sherds had
come into contact with milk, indicating the practice of dairying in
Britain goes back beyond 4,500 BC

Next step

Scientists believe humans began to move away from a society based on
hunting and gathering to one built around farming more than 10,000 years
ago.

The new agrarian technologies are likely to have originated in the Near
East, before spreading north and west. But establishing when and where
exactly dairy husbandry started has not been easy.

Archaeologists have relied on artefacts such as ancient cheese strainers
to get some clues as to its origin. There are even some pictorial records
dating to about 3,000 or 4,000 BC that suggest the practice was going on
in Egypt and the Sahara.

And the discovery of animal bones of greater age at archaeological sites
also hints at systematic milking, as it is younger animals (even today)
that tend to be kept for their meat.

"It is clear that by the time farming reached Britain, milk was already
an important commodity," said Dr Mark Copley, the lead researcher on the
PNAS study.

"The next big step is to trace the line back through the earlier
communities to find the origin of dairying.

"If one was to take a pot from, say, the Mediterranean, it is more than
likely we would find older evidence. This is what we are trying to do
now."