Onon Prize Series Lecture 2024: 14 October – Yuki Konagaya

The Beginning of Milking in Human History: A Perspective of Cultural Anthropology in Mongolia

Yuki Konagaya (National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka)

Milking is a innovative technology in human history in that it allows animals to be used without killing them. In the Middle East, sedentalization first began in the Neolithic Age, followed by cultivation, then domestication around 8500 B.C., and the use of milk began around 7500 B.C., after which livestock spread rapidly. In other words, milk is a new nutrition that cannot be replaced by hunting, and milk is seen as the driving force behind the spread of livestock as a value. So how in the world did people come up with the idea of milking other living creatures?

The Mongolian plateau is not the place where milking originated. However, detailed observation of mother-infant interventions during the pre-milking period (i.e., the child-bearing period) reveals the reality that people seize the opportunity to milk for young animals when they are nursing them. It is dangerous of course, but not impossible, to infer the undomesticated past from the domesticated present.