Prehistoric babies drank animal milk

Abstract

Around 9,000 years ago, humans in Europe started to settle down, plant crops, and raise animals. They also had a baby boom. Chemists led by Julie Dunne of the University of Bristol have now found evidence that by the first century BCE parents were weaning their children with animal milk (Nature 2019, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1572-x). “This is the first direct evidence that babies were bottle-fed ruminant milk in prehistoric Europe,” says Siân Halcrow, an expert in childhood archaeology at the University of Otago who wasn’t involved in the study In 2016, Dunne was scrolling through Facebook when a post caught her eye. The post was from the “Motherhood in Prehistory” page, run by Katharina Rebay-Salisbury at the Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology, and it described prehistoric feeding vessels. These vessels are small and have a spout that someone could use to pour liquid into a mouth or that a child