Posted on 10/18/2019 6:22:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
...we did some very delicate drilling to produce enough ceramic powder and then treated it with a chemical technique that extracts molecules called lipids... from the fats, oils and waxes of the natural world and are normally absorbed into the material of the prehistoric pots during cooking, or, in this case, through heating the milk.
Luckily, these lipids often survive for thousands of years. We regularly use this technique to find out what sort of food people cooked in their ancient pots. It seems they ate many of the things we eat today, including various types of meat, dairy products, fish, vegetables and honey.
Our results showed that the three vessels contained ruminant animal milk, either from cows, sheep or goat...
This research gives us a greater insight into the lives of mothers and babies in the past and how prehistoric families were dealing with infant feeding and nutrition at what would have been a very risky time in an infant's life. Child mortality would have been high -- there were no antibiotics in those days -- and feeding babies with animal milk would have come with its own set of risks... unpasteurized milk carries the risk of contamination from bacteria and can transmit disease from the animal.
Like all good research, this begs a range of new questions. Both the ancient Greeks and the Romans used very similar vessels and we know of a small number in a prehistoric site in Sudan. It would be interesting to see how these generations of children were fed and raised elsewhere in the world. It's perhaps comforting to know that despite the vast distance of time, these people loved and cared for their children in much the same way that we do today.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
No two year olds shouldn’t need to nurse.
Babies handle most foods by the time they are one.
However I could see these bottles used as a type of sippy cup or what have you for a while.
Give a newborn cow milk and they will usually be in great distress and probably eventually die through diarrhea and malnutritin. They can’t digest it properly if at all.
If I knew that I had forgotten; it does seem to strike a distant bell. I fathered two children, but they are now middle aged. :^|
Those of us who grew up in the country have enjoyed the flavor of unpasteurized milk. :^) If memory serves, until recently (and maybe to this day) Romania was still using handpiled stocks of mixed "weeds" as dairy feed, and didn't pasteurize, probably not an EU-friendly position.
Whatever (if anything) they used didn't survive, the ceramics did.
I cheddar to think how long it's been.
At least it wasn't a Jon Huntsman video.
Entomologist Confirms First Saharan Farming 10,000 Years Ago
Popular Archaeology | St Patrick’s Day, Saturday, March 17, 2018 | editors
Posted on 3/22/2018, 7:05:59 PM by SunkenCiv
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3641729/posts
[snip] chemical analysis of pottery from the site demonstrates that cereal soup and cheese were being produced. [/snip]
Was the mIlk pasteurized or only past her knees?
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