Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Prehistoric dairy farming at the extremes


Finland's love of milk has been traced back to 2500 BC thanks to high-tech techniques to analyse residues preserved in fragments of ancient pots. 


Corded Ware sherds [Credit: Finnish National Board of Antiquities] 

The Finns are the world's biggest milk drinkers today but experts had previously been unable to establish whether prehistoric dairy farming was possible in the harsh environment that far north, where there is snow for up to four months a year. 

Research by the Universities of Bristol and Helsinki, published July 30 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is the first of its kind to identify that dairying took place at this latitude -- 60 degrees north of the equator.

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