"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Saturday, October 16, 2010

THE ADVENT OF DAIRY-FARMING DROVE NEOLITHIC MIGRATION FROM MIDDLE EAST TO EUROPE

NK: New research has revealed that immigration from the Middle East to Europe was driven by the newcomers' sophisticated culture, mastery of agriculture - and their miracle food, milk.
...around 5300 BC, everyone in Central Europe was suddenly farming and raising livestock. The members of the Linear Pottery culture kept cows in wooden pens, used rubbing stones and harvested grain.

Many academics felt that invasion was the reason behind the rapid shift. However, new excavations in Turkey, as well as genetic analyses of domestic animals and Stone Age skeletons, indicate that around 7000 BC, a mass migration of farmers began from the Middle East to Europe.

These ancient farmers brought along domesticated cattle and pigs. They produced fresh milk, which, as a result of a genetic mutation, they were soon able to drink in large quantities. The result was that the population of farmers grew and grew.

Later, scientists discovered that the first milk drinkers lived in the territory of present-day Austria, Hungary and Slovakia.

There are also signs of conflict. The intruders differed from the continent''s Ice Age inhabitants "through completely different genetic lines," explained Joachim Burger, an anthropologist from the University of Mainz in southwestern Germany.

The more primitive existing inhabitants looked on in bewilderment as the newcomers deforested their hunting grounds, tilled the soil and planted seeds. This apparently upset them and motivated them to resist the intruders.

It is clear, however, that the dairy farmers won out in the end. During their migration, they encountered increasingly lush pastures, a paradise for their cowsd. An added benefit of migrating farther to the north was that raw milk lasted longer in the cooler climate.

The new food was especially beneficial for children. In the Neolithic Age, many small children died after being weaned in their fourth year of life. "As a result of consuming healthy milk, this could be greatly reduced," Hamburg biologist Fritz Hoffeler speculated. All of this led to population growth and, as a result, further geographical expansion.

Burger is convinced that milk played a major part in shaping history, just as gunpowder did much later.
I THINK THE SUBSEQUENT BIG AGRICULTURAL INPUT WHICH EFFECTED CIVILIZATION WAS USING CAFFEINE DRINKS INSTEAD OF FERMENTED DRINKS.

5 comments:

ooGcM taobmaetS said...

I THINK THE SUBSEQUENT BIG AGRICULTURAL INPUT WHICH EFFECTED CIVILIZATION WAS USING CAFFEINE DRINKS INSTEAD OF FERMENTED DRINKS.

Quite a jump!

According to Wiki:
"The earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking appears in the middle of the fifteenth century,..."

Reliapundit said...

TEA WAS A BIT EARLIER.

THE INTRODUCTION OF TEA A COFFEE INTO EUROPE GOT THEM EUROPEANS OFF THEIR DRUNK ASSES AND CONQUERING THE WORLD.

BEFORE ONLY THE CHINESE AND ARABS AND TURK WERE DRINKING IT. HENCE THEIR SPREAD.

ooGcM taobmaetS said...

My bias for coffee shows. Tea didn't even occur to me. Thanks!

Juniper in the Desert said...

Also, Europe was warming up and recovering from the last Ice age about 10,000 years ago. The ice reached to just to the north of the River Thames - sometimes a mile thick!

The melting caused the sea level to rise and cover the land link from France and Holland to England.

ooGcM taobmaetS said...

Also also, wasn't this about the time of the beginning of the great drying out (desert-ification) of the "fertile crescent" - when a lot of folk migrated to greener, more temperate areas?