Comments on: Got Milk? Humans Did, Almost 9,000 Years Ago

By: CheeseMakerFan

CheeseMakerFan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:21:47 +0000

Interrobanged.

By: CheeseMaker

CheeseMaker — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:09:55 +0000

Umm… I hate to break it to you Interrobang, but if you use unpasteurized milk to make the butter, you end up with cultured butter which is lactose free. The butter most common today has lactose because it’s made with pasteurized milk. Since pasteurization wasn’t invented until 1862, it’s pretty safe to assume that the naturally occurring milk bacteria was present in the milk when the butter was processed 9000 years ago.

Clearly you need to do a bit more research on dairy foods and dairy processing.

By: Interrobang

Interrobang — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:04:57 +0000

I hate to break it to you, but butter is full of lactose. There’s no real “processing” of the milk involved with making butter, at least nothing that changes its composition in any way. You just churn whole milk until the solid fat starts floating on the top. Then you skim it off and press it into blocks in a butter mould. So if ancient people were eating butter as a regular part of their diet, they were either lactase-persistent, or unwittingly giving themselves indigestion.

I’ve put a lot of effort into learning the relative lactose contents of various dairy foods, since I’m one of these non-lactase-persistent people. There are still lots of us out here.

By: Clan:Rewired

Clan:Rewired — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:10:31 +0000

Pottery being handed down for thousands of years without breaking? mmmmm Think again?

By: shaun

shaun — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:29:03 +0000

Maybe someone down the line re-used the pottery? just a thought