Uncovering Ancient Secrets: Why Did Neolithic Parents Choose Animal-Shaped Bottles for Their Babies?
This type of pottery first appeared more than 7,000 years ago when Europeans were transitioning from hunter-gatherer to agrarian lifestyles.
The bowls themselves date from around 2,500 to 3,200 years ago. They’re small enough for a baby to hold, with some even designed to look like mythical animals children might enjoy.
Lead author and University of Bristol archaeologist Julie Dunne believes this prehistoric find and subsequent analysis is a historic first.
“This is the first time that we’ve been able to identify the types of foods fed to prehistoric babies,” she told NPR. “I can just imagine a little prehistoric child being given one of these with milk in it and laughing. They’re just fun. They’re like a little toy as well.”
H. Seidl da Fonseca/Nature JournalWhile transitioning from the mother’s milk to that of animals allowed the mother to become more fertile again, and thus produce more children, these vessels were hard to clean and caused a lot of illness and death.
Published in the journal Nature, the study also provides one possible explanation for a Neolithic baby boom.
Scientists hadn’t “recognized that the introduction of animal milk to infants’ diets could have changed a woman’s fertility” until now, explained bioarchaeologist Siân Halcrow. This is “the first direct evidence for animal milk being contained in these bottles for feeding to babies” — and that has huge ramifications.
Katharina Rebay-SalisburyJulie Dunn and her team used chemical and isotopic analysis to find residue of milk from the ruminant family (goat, cow, and sheep). The baby boom in Neolithic Europe coincided with the period this type of clay pottery dates from.
“There’s clinical evidence that when women are breastfeeding, they have a period of infertility,” said Halcrow. “So if women aren’t constantly suckling their young, they could actually have more babies during their lifetime, and it could result in an increase in population size.”
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