Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus
Milk is a major food of global economic importance, and its consumption is regarded as a classic example of gene-culture evolution. Humans have exploited animal milk as a food resource for at least 8500 years, but the origins, spread, and scale of dairying remain poorly understood. Indirect lines of...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:4245811 2023-05-15T16:29:20+02:00 Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus Warinner, C. Hendy, J. Speller, C. Cappellini, E. Fischer, R. Trachsel, C. Arneborg, J. Lynnerup, N. Craig, O. E. Swallow, D. M. Fotakis, A. Christensen, R. J. Olsen, J. V. Liebert, A. Montalva, N. Fiddyment, S. Charlton, S. Mackie, M. Canci, A. Bouwman, A. Rühli, F. Gilbert, M. T. P. Collins, M. J. 2014-11-27 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4245811 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25429530 https://doi.org/10.1038/srep07104 en eng Nature Publishing Group http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25429530 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep07104 Copyright © 2014, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ CC-BY Article Text 2014 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/srep07104 2014-12-07T01:37:56Z Milk is a major food of global economic importance, and its consumption is regarded as a classic example of gene-culture evolution. Humans have exploited animal milk as a food resource for at least 8500 years, but the origins, spread, and scale of dairying remain poorly understood. Indirect lines of evidence, such as lipid isotopic ratios of pottery residues, faunal mortality profiles, and lactase persistence allele frequencies, provide a partial picture of this process; however, in order to understand how, where, and when humans consumed milk products, it is necessary to link evidence of consumption directly to individuals and their dairy livestock. Here we report the first direct evidence of milk consumption, the whey protein β-lactoglobulin (BLG), preserved in human dental calculus from the Bronze Age (ca. 3000 BCE) to the present day. Using protein tandem mass spectrometry, we demonstrate that BLG is a species-specific biomarker of dairy consumption, and we identify individuals consuming cattle, sheep, and goat milk products in the archaeological record. We then apply this method to human dental calculus from Greenland's medieval Norse colonies, and report a decline of this biomarker leading up to the abandonment of the Norse Greenland colonies in the 15th century CE. Text Greenland PubMed Central (PMC) Greenland Scientific Reports 4 1 |
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Article Warinner, C. Hendy, J. Speller, C. Cappellini, E. Fischer, R. Trachsel, C. Arneborg, J. Lynnerup, N. Craig, O. E. Swallow, D. M. Fotakis, A. Christensen, R. J. Olsen, J. V. Liebert, A. Montalva, N. Fiddyment, S. Charlton, S. Mackie, M. Canci, A. Bouwman, A. Rühli, F. Gilbert, M. T. P. Collins, M. J. Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus |
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description |
Milk is a major food of global economic importance, and its consumption is regarded as a classic example of gene-culture evolution. Humans have exploited animal milk as a food resource for at least 8500 years, but the origins, spread, and scale of dairying remain poorly understood. Indirect lines of evidence, such as lipid isotopic ratios of pottery residues, faunal mortality profiles, and lactase persistence allele frequencies, provide a partial picture of this process; however, in order to understand how, where, and when humans consumed milk products, it is necessary to link evidence of consumption directly to individuals and their dairy livestock. Here we report the first direct evidence of milk consumption, the whey protein β-lactoglobulin (BLG), preserved in human dental calculus from the Bronze Age (ca. 3000 BCE) to the present day. Using protein tandem mass spectrometry, we demonstrate that BLG is a species-specific biomarker of dairy consumption, and we identify individuals consuming cattle, sheep, and goat milk products in the archaeological record. We then apply this method to human dental calculus from Greenland's medieval Norse colonies, and report a decline of this biomarker leading up to the abandonment of the Norse Greenland colonies in the 15th century CE. |
format |
Text |
author |
Warinner, C. Hendy, J. Speller, C. Cappellini, E. Fischer, R. Trachsel, C. Arneborg, J. Lynnerup, N. Craig, O. E. Swallow, D. M. Fotakis, A. Christensen, R. J. Olsen, J. V. Liebert, A. Montalva, N. Fiddyment, S. Charlton, S. Mackie, M. Canci, A. Bouwman, A. Rühli, F. Gilbert, M. T. P. Collins, M. J. |
author_facet |
Warinner, C. Hendy, J. Speller, C. Cappellini, E. Fischer, R. Trachsel, C. Arneborg, J. Lynnerup, N. Craig, O. E. Swallow, D. M. Fotakis, A. Christensen, R. J. Olsen, J. V. Liebert, A. Montalva, N. Fiddyment, S. Charlton, S. Mackie, M. Canci, A. Bouwman, A. Rühli, F. Gilbert, M. T. P. Collins, M. J. |
author_sort |
Warinner, C. |
title |
Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus |
title_short |
Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus |
title_full |
Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus |
title_fullStr |
Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus |
title_full_unstemmed |
Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus |
title_sort |
direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group |
publishDate |
2014 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4245811 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25429530 https://doi.org/10.1038/srep07104 |
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Greenland |
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Greenland |
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Greenland |
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Greenland |
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25429530 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep07104 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2014, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1038/srep07104 |
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Scientific Reports |
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