Around 9,000 years ago, communities in Southwest Asia began to settle in permanent villages. People shifted from hunting and gathering to farming crops and herding animals. In the Zagros Mountains of present-day Iran, goats and sheep were among the first animals brought under human control. Archaeologists have long known that these animals supplied meat. Clear proof of early milk use has been harder to find.
A recent study published in Nature Human Behaviour presents direct evidence of dairy consumption in the Zagros during the seventh millennium BCE. The research team included scholars from French and Iranian institutions who examined pottery fragments and human remains from Neolithic sites in the region.
The scientists focused first on ceramic vessels. When people heat or store milk in pots, fats soak into the clay walls. Those fats can survive for thousands of years. The team extracted lipid residues from the pottery and analyzed their chemical structure. The results matched the profile of milk from goats and sheep. Radiocarbon dating of some residues placed dairy processing at more than 8,000 years ago.
The researchers then turned to human teeth. Hardened plaque, known as dental calculus, traps tiny food particles and proteins. Even after millennia, traces remain. Laboratory tests identified milk proteins preserved in the calculus of several individuals. This provided direct evidence that people consumed dairy products.
Animal bones from the same sites add context. The age and sex patterns of goat and sheep remains suggest herd management aimed at milk production. Many animals lived long enough to produce milk rather than being slaughtered young for meat. This pattern supports the chemical findings from pottery and teeth.
Evidence from Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, shows cattle milk use during a similar period. The two regions followed parallel paths. In the Zagros, herders relied mainly on goats and sheep. In Anatolia, cattle played a larger role. Both cases point to early and sustained dairy production during the spread of farming and herding.
Humans have eaten meat for at least 2.6 million years. Direct proof of milk consumption appears much later in the archaeological record. By combining lipid analysis, protein identification, faunal data, and radiocarbon dating, the researchers provide firm evidence for dairy use in the Zagros in the seventh millennium BCE.
Milk offered a steady food source from living animals. Such a strategy would have supported growing village populations in the early Neolithic. The new findings add detail to the picture of how herding communities in the Zagros organized food production more than eight thousand years ago.
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