Milk, Civilization and the
Ancient World
“And
the Lord said, I am come down to deliver my people
out of the hand of the Egyptians and unto a good
land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
- Exodus 3:8[i]
Human consumption of animal milk is usually linked
to the beginnings of grain farming some 10,000
years ago.[ii]
Most treatises on the history of the human diet
assume that animal husbandry began with the dawn
of agriculture, making dairy products a relatively
recent human food. But archeological evidence
indicates that 30,000 years ago people in the
High Sinai Peninsula at the north end of the Red
Sea used fences to aid in confining and breeding
antelope for their milk.[iii]
They likely were one of many cultures that used
milk long before the beginnings of agriculture.
Physically, civilization rests on the soil, because
the soil produces the nutrients for the grasses
that feed the animals that feed the people. Fertile
soil ultimately provided the milk upon which civilization
was quite literally built.
In the whole range of organic matter, milk is
the only thing purposely designed and prepared
by nature as food. Early humans did not hesitate
to appropriate this gift of nature for their own
use. No state of civilization has ever been attained
without the subjugation of animals and the subsequent
use of their milk; from the infancy of human society,
distinction has been assigned to the bovine species
in history. Those species include the bison, buffalo,
yak and domestic animals of the genus Bos, like
cows and bulls. Where people have gone, the ox
and his kind have followed. In every country,
bovines are either indigenous or naturalized.
In most, their milk has at one time or another
been used as an essential article of human sustenance
- in many, as the chief.[iv]
The earliest Hebrew scriptures contain abundant
evidence of the widespread use of milk from very
early times. The Old Testament refers to a “land
which floweth with milk and honey” some
twenty times. The phrase describes Palestine as
a land of extraordinary fertility, providing all
the comforts and necessities of life. In all,
there are some fifty references in the Bible to
milk and milk products.[v]
Milk is often used metaphorically to signify privileges
and spiritual blessings.
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