6000-year-old cheese and milk

Chemical analysis of 6000-year-old pottery shards shows ancient Britons also had a taste for cow's milk and goat's cheese.

"This is the first direct evidence for widespread dairying at prehistoric sites anywhere in the world," says Richard Evershed, professor of biogeochemistry at the University of Bristol, UK. Archaeologists had previously uncovered a few objects that suggested dairying, such as suspected cheese strainers, but nothing unambiguous.

Until now, the earliest proof of dairying was a picture of a Sumerian frieze in the Baghdad Museum showing milking 4500 years ago. "And in Britain we had no proof till pictures and writing in Roman times," Evershed told New Scientist.

Posted by David on January 27, 2003 10:04 PM