Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 4, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/srep07104
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Funding
- Swiss Foundation for Nutritional Research, University of York C2D2 Research Priming Fund grant - Wellcome Trust [097829/Z/11/A]
- Marie Curie grants EUROTAST FP7 PEOPLE MC IT
- LeCHE [215362-2]
- Maexi Foundation Zurich, ERC Advanced Award CodeX, Danish National Research Foundation [DNRF94]
- University of Copenhagen Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research
- Carlsberg Foundation
- Danish Council for Independent Research grant [10-081390]
- European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework programme (FP)/ERC [269442-THE RISE]
- Natural Environment Research Council [1219549] Funding Source: researchfish
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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 beta-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.
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