Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus

TY - JOUR

T1 - Direct evidence of milk consumption from ancient human dental calculus

AU - Warinner, Christina

AU - Hendy, Jessica Ruth

AU - Speller, Camilla Filomena

AU - Cappellini, Enrico

AU - Fischer, Roman

AU - Trachsel, Christian

AU - Arneborg, J

AU - Lynnerup, N.

AU - Craig, Oliver Edward

AU - Swallow, DM

AU - Fotakis, Anna

AU - Christensen, RJ

AU - Olsen, JV

AU - Liebert, A

AU - Montalva, N

AU - Fiddyment, Sarah

AU - Charlton, Sophy Jessica Laura

AU - Mackie, Meaghan

AU - Canci, A

AU - Bouwman, Abigail

AU - Rühli, Frank

AU - Gilbert, M. Thomas P.

AU - Collins, Matthew James

N1 - 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/

PY - 2014/11/27

Y1 - 2014/11/27

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Dental Calculus

KW - Milk

KW - Beta-lactoglobulin

KW - Archaeology

KW - Lactase Persistence

U2 - 10.1038/srep07104

DO - 10.1038/srep07104

M3 - Article

SN - 2045-2322

VL - 4

JO - Scientific Reports

JF - Scientific Reports

M1 - 7104

ER -