Yes, Cheese Was Made 7,200 Years Ago. What Really Matters, Though, Is How Food Processing Brought About Wider Changes in Human Life

Wonderful little pots for cheese shaped to resemble animals or humans

Discovering that something–cheese, in this case–goes back further than we thought is always a headline grabber. Ancient cheese has been all over the popular science headlines for the past few weeks. First, there was actual cheese residue dating to 3,200 B.P. (Before the Present) in Egypt.  Hard on its heels came the announcement that pottery dating to 7,200 on the coast of Croatia showed residues of fermented milk products, including cheese.  Both dates made the headlines in newspapers, magazines and the on line media.

OK. What leapt out at me though, as a food historian, was that the authors argued that cheese making enabled humans to migrate into northern Europe.

Here are some edited sections from the paper with the most important parts in italics and a few explanatory comments where necessary.

How milk, yogurt and cheese benefitted Neolithic people, especially children

“Consumption of milk and dairy products would have had many advantages for early farming populations. Milk, yogurt, and cheese are a good source of calories, protein, and fat. They could provide a reliable food between harvests or during droughts, epidemics, or famines. Milk is a relatively pathogen-free source of fluids that could be critical during times of water scarcity. Cheese provides a means of storing these nutrients to be used when milk production is low, and can be easily transported. Furthermore, fermentation of milk into yogurt or cheese lowers lactose content and allows lactose intolerant individuals to reap the benefits, while maintaining, or in some cases enhancing, other essential nutrients such as fat and calcium.

The benefits of milk, yogurt, and cheese consumption may have been especially important for children. Early childhood is one of the most dangerous periods in pre-industrial human societies, as evidenced by increased mortality seen in numerous prehistoric skeletal collections. The availability of milk or dairy products as a high calorie, pathogen-safe, and nutrient rich source of food for young children recently weaned likely helped those high-risk populations survive childhood.

The availability of milk in the Early Neolithic provided a source of digestible calories and low-pathogen liquids suitable for young children, potentially increasing their survivorship rates during a high mortality risk period. Milk also allowed young children to be weaned earlier, which in turn would have decreased birth intervals.”

How kitchen equipment increased when milk products became part of the diet

The researchers were able to link particular kinds of pots dating to 5200 cal BCE (7200 BP) with particular kinds of food. The elegant pots like that on the top right were for milk (though they also contained animal fats and fish).  Wide bowls like that in the center were for meat. The charming legged pots above and bottom left were for cheese.  I’d love to know more both about why they were shaped that way, whether they were used for storage or for serving or both, and why they were made to resemble humans or animals. The mind races.

There had to ways of preserving that cheese if it was to be more than a seasonal delicacy

Cheese is milk’s leap towards immortality, said a wit. Sad to say, fresh cheese doesn’t go very far toward immortality (nor does yogurt). The cattle, sheep and goats these people herded would not have giving milk all year round, only for a few months after giving birth in the spring.

For all the wondrous changes in human life the authors posit to have occurred post-cheese making, there had to be some ways to store that cheese.

Today in that part of the world, cheese of the feta type is salted. I saw no mention of salt in the article.

There is also a long history of drying mixtures of differing proportions of yogurt and grain in that part of the world, though the authors do not mention it or grain residues.  It goes by many different names, most variants on tarhana or khisk.  It keeps for ever, is lightweight and easy to carry when traveling, and can be reconstituted as a soupIt would be thrilling if the custom went back to the Neolithic.

(By the by, some years ago I wrote on the older Mexican custom of drying fresh cheese)

Milk, yogurt and cheese allow the settlement of cold northern Europe

Back to the paper.

“This combination of increased childhood survival with increased birth rates would help explain the significant demographic transition [aka population increase] noted for the Neolithic in Europe.

. . . fermented milk products were established dietary supplements by 5300 cal BCE and part of the agricultural package as farming spread into central and northern Europe.

Milk and associated products are also documented among the earliest farmers in other parts of central and northern Europe, based largely on cattle. This spread of farming throughout Europe is associated with demographic shifts, beginning with the appearance of the LBK [a very important type of pottery] around 5400 cal BCE.

Rowley-Conwy hypothesized that the availability of fermented dairy products provided early farmers with a risk-buffering mechanism as a calorie rich, potentially storable food source. We suggest that dairying and fermentation had additional human life-history dependent advantages by reducing infant mortality. This helped stimulate demographic shifts that propelled farming communities to expand and provided the demographic and dietary risk buffering to allow Neolithic farming to spread to colder, temperate climates.”

Innovation in food processing as an important cause of historical change

One of my mantras is “no grindstones and mortars, no cereal grains; no cereal grains, no cities.”  Hence processing grains is just as important as, and prior to farming them.

Another is “no industrialization of food processing, no economical, abundant food; no economical, abundant food, no modern states.”

Both of those statements are a bit quick.  I explain in more detail in Cuisine and Empire.

Now maybe I should add “no containers, no milk processing; no milk processing, no migration into northern Europe.”

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