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Early Europeans bottle-fed babies with animal milk

The foods used to supplement or replace breast milk in infants’ diets in prehistoric times aren’t fully understood. The finding that ancient feeding vessels from Europe had residues of animal milk offers a clue.
  1. Siân E. Halcrow

    1. Siân E. Halcrow is in the Department of Anatomy, University of Otago, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand.

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Small pottery vessels, sometimes with animal-like forms (Fig. 1), containing a spout through which liquid could be poured, have been found at prehistoric archaeological sites in Europe. One idea put forward is that they were used as feeding vessels for sick adults and the elderly. However, writing in Nature, Dunne et al.1 describe an analysis of spouted vessels found in ancient graves of infants in Germany that indicates that these artefacts contained animal milk. This evidence suggests that such vessels were used to feed animal milk to children, providing crucial insight into the diet of developing infants in prehistoric human populations.

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Nature 574, 182-183 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02805-z

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