Researchers Find 5000-Yr-Old Vessels With Traces of Cow Milk, Were Used as 'Sippy Cups' to Wean Children
Findings across decades have indicated that there are many common aspects between modern and ancient lifestyles. This fact again became clear when archaeologists located certain artifacts in Germany, stated The Conversation. Findings regarding these items were published in Nature.
These artifacts were identified to be clay vessels and were unearthed from ancient graves in Bavaria. Three vessels were found in total, two from an Iron Age cemetery dated between 450 and 800 B.C. and another from a Bronze Age necropolis, created somewhere between 800 and 1200 B.C. Researchers believe these vessels acted like bottles that were used to wean children around 5,000 years ago.
The vessels were between two and four inches in size and featured narrow spouts, stated CNN. The burials where the bottles were found belonged to children, ranging from infants to six years old. Experts associated with the study conducted an organic residue analysis on the artifacts. Past artifacts of the same kind were not suitable for such examination because of their tiny openings. However, these three vessels had open bowls, which allowed researchers to go through with chemical and isotopic analysis.
Examinations revealed that the residue inside the vessels contained palmitic and stearic fatty acids, which are found in animal fat, and short-chain fatty acids typically detected in milk fat. Such acids are not usually spotted in old pottery. Isotopic analysis further revealed that breast milk was possibly mixed with animal milk in the bottles.
Experts claim the animal milk inside the vessels came from domesticated goats, sheep, and cattle. This implies that children were possibly fed animal milk to get weaned off breast milk. "These very small, evocative vessels give us valuable information on how and what babies were fed thousands of years ago, providing a real connection to mothers and infants in the past," said Julie Dunne, lead study author at the University of Bristol’s School of Chemistry. "Similar vessels, although rare, do appear in other prehistoric cultures (such as Rome and ancient Greece) across the world. Ideally, we’d like to carry out a larger geographic study and investigate whether they served the same purpose."
Researchers were delighted that their study showcased how certain practices like weaning remained popular both in ancient and modern times. "This is a striking example of how robust biomolecular information, properly integrated with the archeology of these rare objects, has provided a fascinating insight into an aspect of prehistoric human life so familiar to us today," said Richard Evershed, study co-author and Fellow of the Royal Society leading the University of Bristol’s Organic Geochemistry Unit.
The study claimed that such practices aided humans in increasing their population and becoming more healthy. Past studies showcase that children in hunter-gatherer communities breastfed for years. However, agriculture provided humans with supplementary nutrients like those in animal milk and cereals. "This ultimately led to the so-called ‘Neolithic demographic transition’ where the widespread use of animal milk to feed babies, or as a supplementary weaning food, led to improved nutrition and contributed to an increased birth rate, with shorter interbirth intervals, which resulted in significant growth in human population and ultimately led to the growth of cities and the rise of urbanization that we see today," Dunne added.