Evidence of dairy diets in Meath…from 4,000 years ago

Written by Agriland Team

Archaeologists in University College Dublin (UCD) have found evidence that prehistoric people in Meath had dairy diets – some 4,000 years ago.

As an aside at a sustainability panel discussion on “Are vegan diets better for us?”, organised by Healthy UCD and UCD Nutrition Society, last Thursday, February 27, Dr. Patrick (Paddy) Wall, Professor of Public Health in UCD, said:

“There’s a satellite farm for UCD out in Dowth, Co. Meath and on the farm they were doing some excavations.

They discovered a passage tomb that was 4,000 years old – it’s actually out in the Boyne Valley, near Newgrange.

Dr. Wall noted that the Archaeology Department in UCD found pottery in the passage tomb when its archaeologists were investigating the site.

“All the pottery now is glazed – at that time it wasn’t glazed,” he explained, noting that such unglazed pottery absorbs proteins and fats from whatever was being cooked or eaten in them.

Continuing, he added:

They found these pots in Neolithic tombs across Europe and, in a lot of them it’s a meat-based protein that they found – but in the Boyne Valley it was dairy proteins they found.

“If they were milking cows in the Boyne Valley 4,000 years ago, chances are they’ll keep doing it,” Dr. Wall concluded.

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