The Origin of Milking

The Origin of Milking
For million of years, breast milk has been the first beverage. Replacement with animal milk carried tremendous implications and potential nutritional advantages.

The first irrefutable evidence for milking domesticated livestock and, by implication, human use of milk and the manufacture of dairy products, dates to approx 4000 BCE and is based on Stone Age rock art produced in the central Sahara region of Africa.

By 1500 BCE, milk use was widely distributed, and in India, many of milk’s qualities and already been described in the Charaka-Samhita.

“Cow milk has ten properties: sweet, cold, soft, fatty, viscous, smooth, slimy, heavy, dull and clear. Buffalo milk is heavier and colder than that from cow; useful to cure sleeplessness and excessive digestive power. Camel milk is rough, hot, slightly saline, light and prescribed for hardness in the bowels, works against worms... Milk from one-hooved animals (donkey; horse) is hot slightly, sour, saline, rough, light, promotes strength, stability, alleviates vata in extremities, Goat milk is astringent...”

Anthropologists, geographers and physicians have written on the physiologic and dietary implications of human using animal milk and use or nonuse o flavored particular societies.

With our ability to feed grass to livestock and the use of milk in its raw form or as fermented cheese, humans expanded into new areas of habitation and increased population density.

The majority of other human populations, following the standard mammalian pattern – lose the ability to maintain lactase production and therefore, cannot digest animal milks easily, a pattern evidenced by most Asians, West Africans, Southern European Mediterraneans and most Central and Southern American.

However, some human populations now maintain lactase production throughout their lives, a physiologic characteristic that links peoples and cultures as diverse as east African cattle pastoralist (the Masai, Suk, and Turkana) with northern European Scandinavians (e.g., Danes, Norwegian and Swedes).

Different cultures have widely diverging regarding the suitability of animal milks as human foods or beverages.

For some, it is question of identification: because animal milks are for the young of specific animal, it is wrong to mix these foods because the consumer may take on characteristics or the animal.
The Origin of Milking