An international team of researchers has discovered that the mass migration of representatives of the pit culture in Eurasia could be associated with the beginning of the use of dairy products. Article scientists published in the journal Nature.
Pastoralists pit culture was one of the oldest, who settled in the steppes of Eurasia. However, until now it remained a mystery, which allowed them to overcome such vast distances. Researchers from Samara University, together with colleagues from Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Switzerland and the United States conducted proteome analysis – a set of proteins – tartar from the remains of the jaws 56 people lived in the Copper Age (from 4600 to 3300 BC), early (from 3300 2500 BC) and the middle bronze age (from 2500 to 1700 BC) in the Pontic-Caspian steppe.
It turned out that most people Chalcolithic period – over 90 percent – there were no traces of the use of dairy products. The overwhelming majority of people Early Bronze Age – 94 percent – are definitely drinking milk and products from it
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“The differences in the composition of milk proteins in different species, however insignificant they may allow us to recover from what happened animals consume milk.”, – explained the study’s lead author, Sheva Wilkin from the Institute for the history of mankind the Max Planck Society. It turned out that in addition to the milk of cows, sheep and goats, people also drink and a horse.
Analysis of tartar people inhabiting Botayskoe settlement 3,500 years ago and supposedly drank horse milk, found no corresponding proteins – which, according to the researchers, said that the Przewalski horse is not an ancestor of the modern. Instead, experts suggest, the domestication of horses began in the Pontic-Caspian steppe at the turn of the IV – III millennium BC in parallel with the way the people of the pit culture is widely spread across Eurasia. Protein-rich milk – also an additional source of liquid – was critical in arid steppes and provided an opportunity for them migration