Obsessed with butter

Buttering toast, the Irish way...

In 2015 an article entitled "Milking the megafauna: Using organic residue analysis to understand early farming practice" was published in the Journal of Environmental Archaeology by Jessica Smyth and Richard P. Evershed... 

The authors of the paper analysed residues found in nearly 500 cooking pots from Neolithic Ireland dated to the period 4,000 to 2,500 BC...

Ninety per cent of the residues tested for fat origin were found to be dairy fats, with ten per cent found to be meat fats (beef or mutton) or a mixture of milk and meat...

Dr Smyth, who led the study, said: "We know from previous research that dairying was an important part of many early farming economies, but what was a big surprise was the prevalence of dairy residues in Irish pots.  It looks to have been a very important food source".

Dr Smyth also said: "We know that settlements were small in the Irish Neolithic, usually one or two houses, so it’s likely that early farming groups had just one or two animals supporting the household with their products, which were perhaps part of a wider community herd"...

"Such results are even more significant given the fact that domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep and goats had to be physically shipped to Ireland as part of the process, as these animals were not native to the island"...

It just so happened that when this paper got published, I read an article in Irish Times about a paper written by UCD professor of archaeology Liam Downey and environmental archaeologist Dr Ingelise Stuijts about the history of "banbidh" (Irish for white foods) in Ireland...

They collated and analysed the data about food consumed in Ireland from the time of the earliest documentary sources up to the late 17th century...

They concluded that despite "extraordinarily high number of cattle in Ireland and an abundance of fish in the Irish waters, ordinary Irish people ate very little beef or fish".

Research had found that people lived primarily on dairy products. The Irish favourite food was butter. But there was also drinking milk, and buttermilk, and fresh curds, and old curds, and something called “real curds,” and whey mixed with water to make a refreshing sour drink...

In 1690, one British visitor to Ireland noted that the natives ate and drank milk "above twenty several sorts of ways and what is strangest for the most part love it best when sourest". 

He was referring to bainne clabair (thick milk), something between old milk and sour cream.

In the 12th c. vision of MacConglinne, he traveled to "the Land of Food" where he saw a delicious drink made up of "very thick milk, of milk not too thick, of milk of long thickness, of milk of medium thickness, of yellow bubbling milk, the swallowing of which needs chewing"...

Medieval British military advisors proposed that the best way to suppress Irish rebellions "would be just to kill all the cows because the majority of the population lived all summer on their cows’ milk"...

The second most important food were cereal products. The ordinary Irish people "ate tons of bread and porridge".

As for meet, it seems that "beef was most commonly consumed by the higher ranks of society, while pork was eaten by the common people..."

It is not surprising then that people so obsessed with butter, cheese and milk valued cattle above all else, to the point of being completely obsessed with them...

Fergus Kelly in his books "A Guide to Early Irish Law" and "Early Irish Farming" talks about cattle as currency in the early medieval Ireland. He gives the list of types of cattle used for payment and their relative value...

The basic unit was a milking cow, usually with her calf.  Different ancient texts give different exchange rates for different types, but they were all given as a fraction of the value of the milking cow. Example:

In-calf cow = two-thirds of a milking cow

Three-year-old heifer = half of milking cow

Two-year-old heifer = one third of milking cow

Yearling heifer = one quarter of milking cow

Yearling bullock = one eighth of milking cow

In one law text, there is an equal value given for a milking cow, a cumal (female slave), an ounce of silver and 2 sét (jewels)...

Cattle was so valued by the Irish, that Cattle raiding and plundering was an intrinsic part of the Old Irish (Scotish) way of life. To the extent that the most important old Irish epic is called Táin Bó Cúailnge which means "the driving-off , stealing, of cows of Cooley".

This epic which is more commonly known as "The cattle raid of Cooley" is a masterpiece of the early Irish literature. And as its name tells us it is a story about a cattle raid. A cattle raid ordered by the Queen Medb of Connacht who wanted to steal the champion bull of Ulster.

This lead to a bloody war between Ulster and Connacht which caused terrible devastation and many casualties on both sides. The most famous of these casualties was the Ulster hero Cú Chulainn, who died defending Ulster from the Connacht forces...

Táin Bó Cúailnge is traditionally set in the 1st century AD in an essentially pre-Christian "age of heroes". I think that the much better name for this period of the Irish history is the "age of armed shepherds"...

Shepherds had to be armed and skilled in battle if they wanted to protect their cattle from other armed shepherd who wanted to steal it. Eventually this must have lead to a formation of a warrior shepherd caste...

That this is probably what happened during the Irish Iron age can be seen from the emergence of the so called "cattle lords" or "cow lords" or "bóaire" in Irish. Bóaire was a freeman ranked below the noble grades but above the unfree...

He would own a share of land, which he inherited from members of his kin and which he could not sell without his kin's approval. He would normally have cattle given to him by a lord (the head of his clan) in exchange for entering into a clientship relationship...

The today Irish are still equally obsessed with milk and milk products...Especially butter...

Anyway, while I was reading all this, one question popped into my mind: is there anything special about the Irish, genetically, that makes them love milk so much?

After all, milk tolerance is not that common...Here is today's lactose tolerance distribution map. See how the maximum is in North Western Europe...Look how dark Ireland is...

So then I looked at the genetic maps and I noticed a strange correlation between R1b haplogroup distribution and the lactose tolerance distribution...I mean, look at Ireland...It's black...So I thought that these two things could be linked...

But then, while researching butter churns and cheese strains from Neolithic and Chalcholitic Central Europe, I came across the data that seems to point to the link between I2a and G2a haplogroups and the earliest cattle herding and milk processing cultures. I talked about this in my post "Milk, butter, cheese"...

Neolithic butter churn

Neolithic cheese strainer

I finished my above article still unsure whether it was I2a or R1b people who were the original milkmen...Well...Today I remembered this article about milk residues in Neolithic Irish cooking vessels...

All the vessels date to 4000-2500BC...Very very important...Why is this important? Because according to the latest genetic data, R1b people most likely didn't arrive to Ireland until mid 3rd millennium BC...

So who were the milking cow obsessed Neolithic Irish...I2a...Neolithic megalith builders...And milk drinkers...So is it possible that this is another indicator that the original lactose tolerance genes developed among the I2a people?

Did the Bronze, Iron, Medieval and Modern age R1b Irish get their love of milk and all things milky (and get the ability to process lactose) through mixing with the Neolithic I2a Irish? I think so...

Distribution of I2a and I2b haplogroups in Europe...