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Remembering When Only Barbarians Drank Milk (2018)
- bee_rider 5y ago> Curiously, the Greco-Roman disdain for dairy stopped short at cheese. I was almost upset to hear that they hated dairy -- given how much wine they had around, how could they not have cheese? Thankfully this line redeemed them.
- mr_toad 5y agoI wouldn’t be surprised if there were class differences. Wine and cheese for the patricians, bread and milk for the plebs.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago> Curiously, the Greco-Roman disdain for dairy stopped short at cheese. In Rome, cheese was eaten by both the rich and the poor.
- stevenjohns 5y agoI feel like this is glancing over various points. Specifically that cows aren’t the only source of milk: sheep, goats, buffalo and horses have all been milked throughout history, and would have been the main source for milk in Rome. And it wasn’t historically looked down upon: major Abrahamic faiths venerated milk consumption. For some reason yogurt is also glanced over even though Oxygala (or something like it) would have definitely been consumed almost daily. It seems like this is a fairly Eurocentric view. Not even that, really, but a specific-period-of-time-in-Rome view. The Romans didn’t like butter… that’s about it. And they didn’t like it because it spoils too easily in their environment. Expanding that to dairy in general is quite a reach. Looking at what someone eats and picking on them for it still takes place in 2021 — try sending your kid with a whole cucumber to school.
- shortsightedsid 5y agoThe article is definitely Eurocentric and skips South-East Asia and India. Milk, Butter, Ghee and Yogurt have been part of Indian culture from the start. E.g. references in the Vedas central to various rituals, Lord Krishna loving butter as a child, etc.. What I found really interesting is the premise that the article makes about spoilage. If dairy spoils in the warmer Mediterranean causing the inhabitants to find it unappealing, then why is it that the people living in hotter climate of India found dairy to be integral to their diet? Is it because because of Ghee which has a longer shelf life? And Yogurt too - even today - integral to any number of Indian households.
- duncan-donuts 5y agoI think yogurt is an exception here because it ferments quickly and doesn’t necessarily need refrigeration. A number of the Indian families I know will make yogurt every day. I suppose you could make a similar argument that butter could be made daily in small batches, but the labor involved in butter making is orders of magnitude greater.
- canadianfella 5y agoIt’s 100 times more effort to make butter?
- stevenjohns 5y agoActually it would be exactly that — when it mentions butter it’s highly unlikely that it is referring to clarified butter.
- captain_price7 5y agoAm from Indian subcontinent. Butter isn't exactly that popular where I'm from (Bangladesh). Milk is usually collected at dawn and consumed in liquid form before the day is over, no need to store anything.
- JetAlone 5y ago
- Jun8 5y agoDrinking milk and consuming various dairy products (kefir, yogurt, cheese, etc.) are strongly associated with "steppe people" which were seen as barbaric (sometimes rightly so), so this perhaps explains some of the points in this post. I was curious about milk and cheese consumption in Ancient Greece and found the following in the Everyday Life of Greeks and Romans (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Everyday_Life_of_the_Greeks_and_Romans/y0kiAQAAIAAJ?hl=en https://www.google.com/books/edition/Everyday_Life_of_the_Gr...) about Greek desserts: "Piquant dishes, stimulating the guests to dining, were chosen in preference; amongst cheeses, those from Sicily and from the town of Tromileia in Achaia [in Southern Thessaly http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:id=achaia-geo] were particularly liked; cakes sprinkled with salt (epipasta) were another important feature of the Greek dessert" p. 266
- staunch 5y agoA kind of similar funny example is in Xenophon's Anabasis, where he mentions "millet-eating Thracians", which always cracks me up. Lots of people ate millet, including Greeks, but this group got referred to as millet-eaters. Seems hilarious to me. "When all of them had been prevailed upon, they continued the march with Seuthes, and, keeping the Pontus upon the right through the country of the millet-eating Thracians, as they are called, arrived at Salmydessus." https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0202:book=7:chapter=5 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1...
- stevenjohns 5y agoThis is actually a great reference. The Roman festival of Parilia was celebrated by offering millet and milk to Pales, followed by drinking wine mixed with milk. This event eventually became Rome’s birthday celebration :)
- EGreg 5y agoI am not sure that was ever true. In the Old Testament, there are lots of references to drinking milk. There is even a saying: Do not boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk. From which rabbis derived various prohibitions on milk consumption together with various meats. Perhaps you’re going to say the milk was always curdled or formed into cheese? And I would ask, how do we know that they didn’t just drink it?
- LAC-Tech 5y ago> I am not sure that was ever true. In the Old Testament, there are lots of references to drinking milk. Wouldn't the people who wrote the old testament have been considered barbarians by the Romans?
- arrosenberg 5y agoJudaism was an ancient and long established religion in the Levant by the time the Roman Republic came into contact with them. They had been under the suzerainty of the Seleucid Greeks for about a hundred years, and had a culture that deeply valued learning, literacy and the law, so they weren't barbarians by any definition. The Romans respected their culture as ancient, and being on par with other cultures in the region (at least until the Judeans started rebelling too frequently).
- LAC-Tech 5y agoWould be interested in some sources for this. My understanding is that anything non-Roman was barbarian by definition.
- arrosenberg 5y agoI'm not an expert, but I don't think that's completely true. The Romans conquered Greece and then Greek culture conquered Rome. I'm not aware that they viewed the Persians, Egyptians or Carthaginians as barbarian either. Unless barbarian strictly means foreign, rather than uncivilized. I wasn't able to find a super authoritative source, but here's a PBS [1] article that lays out the basics - the Romans allowed the Jews to worship their own deity and follow their own practices, and Pompey, Caesar and Augustus all maintained that protection into the early imperial era. They were treated like clients, rather than being subjugated, until the rebellions. [1] https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/jews.html https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/jews.html
- jasonhansel 5y agoHere's my question: why didn't the Romans ever (so far as I can tell) use clarified butter? Like olive oil, it is shelf-stable and has a high smoke point; it was well known in ancient India, so I find it surprising that the idea was never imported.
- bane 5y agoProbably not any reason to. They already had access to other good oils that could be made for far less energy cost than having to raise a cow, milk it, turn the milk to butter, then clarify it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- markdown 5y agoMaybe they didn't know how.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoIt was, and remains, a culture of the olive tree and its oil.
- codesnik 5y agoromans even had cheesecakes! for some reason called "placenta" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giPXpKy2lQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giPXpKy2lQ0
- 174SIGSEGV 5y agoPlacenta is a flat cake, from Ancient Greek πλακοῦντος. Presumably, human placentae are named for their shape.
- ThePadawan 5y agoFun fact! The German word for placenta is still "Mutterkuchen" (mother['s] cake)!
- leto_ii 5y agofun fact, we still have it in Romania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pl%C4%83cint%C4%83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pl%C4%83cint%C4%83 It's called the same and it's delicious :D
- taejo 5y agoAnd in Austrian German crepes/pancakes are called Palatschinken, which comes via Slavic languages from plăcintă, so ultimately from Latin placenta
- dustintrex 5y agoThese days the word "butter" evokes an inoffensive pale white stick in your fridge, but in the days before refrigeration, butter was made at home. And while it keeps much better than milk, it can and does get seriously funky over time. You can get a faint taste of this (literally) with French cultured butter like Pepe Saya, which blurs the line between butter and soft cheese, but if you ever visit Tibet or even a Tibetan temple, the entire place is permeated with the smell of what the Western nose and palate would consider straight-up rancid butter. No wonder the Romans weren't keen on the stuff. (Of course, I imagine the "barbarians" felt the same away about the ubiquitous Roman condiment garum, aka fish sauce.)
- skinkestek 5y ago> the smell of what the Western nose and palate would consider straight-up rancid butter. We produced very high quality (as determined by the local dairy who paid us for it) milk at the farm where I grew up. Yet I remember that whenever we tried to make butter at home it would invariably turn rancid within a very short time. I know there are a few people here with farming background and whatnot, anyone has an idea why that would happen? What did we do wrong?
- mannerheim 5y agoWas it made from unpasteurised milk? Maybe that's the difference.
- katbyte 5y agoSalt. Salt preserves butter and without it will go bad faster then you would expect
- JohnWhigham 5y agoProbably still had a nontrivial amount of water in it. Last time I helped make butter, we repeatedly squeezed it through the cheese cloth to get as much water out as we could.
- ksdale 5y agoI don't know if this is too basic, but we tried to make butter from scratch one time and everything we saw said that if there was even the tiniest bit of liquid left when you're done churning, it would cause the butter to go rancid basically overnight, and sure enough, that's what happened the first time! The next time we made sure there wasn't any liquid left and it lasted much longer. I don't even know what the liquid part is called, but it would get stuck in tiny little air pockets while you were churning and it was very difficult to ensure that it was all gone by the end.
- rkk3 5y agoSurprised they didn't mention anything about nomadic tribes vs farmers.
- mkbkn 5y agoHuman being is perhaps the only living being that drinks other animal's milk and even after the age of 4 or 5. Why?
- 00N8 5y agoWe invented farming, so we had the opportunity. Other animals never figured out how to get milk unless humans or their mothers give it to them.
- tdsamardzhiev 5y agoAdditionally, most animals won't say no to milk if you offer it to them. So yeah, I guess we're the only ones who figured out how to get the milk without getting the horns :)
- ajuc 5y agoSome ant species farm fungi in their nests and milk aphids.
- biellls 5y agoAs humans we have always tried to obtain foods that are safe and nutritious. Even though milk has potential allergens it contains no poisons, toxins or anti-nutrients unlike many plant foods. It is incredibly nutritious and contains sufficient amounts of most minerals and vitamins needed to sustain life (babies use it exclusively without developing any deficiencies after all). Apart from this it has other qualities that make it useful in a post-agriculture world. Diets rich in grains and animal meat are too rich in iron and phosphorous and deficient in calcium. Milk is low in iron, and even binds to iron reducing its absorption. It also has higher calcium compared to phosphorous. It has been shown that the ratio of calcium to phosphorous matters more than absolute consumption of each nutrient, and should be slightly higher than one if we want to avoid leeching calcium from bones. Diets rich in leafy greens and fruits have a favorable ratio, while meats, legumes and cereals do not and this probably contributed to the skeletal deformities we see post agriculture. Dairy helps shift the ratio closer to optimal in the presence of phosphorous rich foods in the diet. With allergies and intolerances being the only reasons not to drink it, and those being more common in poor health. The question should be, why not drink milk?
- JaggerFoo 5y agoAs Arnold Schwarzenegger AKA Conan the Barbarian once said - "Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer" - "Pumping Iron" Anyways didn't colonial prisoners consider it cruel to be fed lobster? Things change over time.
- Pelic4n 5y agoLobster fed to prisoners was grounded whole, with the shell, which contains a tremendous amount of ammonia. Pretty close to eating a bowl of crab soaked in urine with small pieces of shell tearing into your gums. Edit: This post is wrong, that's a myth actually!
- zokula 5y ago> Lobster fed to prisoners was grounded whole, with the shell, No they weren't! It's a myth. >In all my research on this subject, I cannot find a single source of lobster shells being crushed in the entire history of lobster canning, between a dozen books on the subject, encyclopedia entries, and two dozen articles about lobster canning. Lobster shells are made out of chitin and are entirely inedible. Furthermore, there is no economical reason for trying to mash up rock-hard lobster shells to ‘stretch’ an abundant product, especially in an era before industrial grinders were available. >In the colonial times, lobsters were harvested from tidal pools by hand, and were in extreme abundance. They were fed to children, prisoners, and indentured servants. They were also often used as fertilizer and animal feed. According to food historian Kathleen Curtin, prisoners and indentured servants enacting laws to limit how often they were fed lobster is also a myth, and there isn’t a shred of documentation of it actually happening. https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/emcx69/the_history_of_lobster_canning_aka_lobsters_were/ https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/emcx69/the_history...
- Pelic4n 5y agoDamn, the more you learn!! Thanks!
- pionar 5y agoChicken used to be a rare delicacy in the west until mass production in the 1960s.
- coldtea 5y ago>The Romans often commented on the inferiority of other cultures, and they took excessive milk drinking as evidence of barbarism. Similarly, butter was a useful ointment for burns; it was not a suitable food. As Pliny the Elder bluntly put it, butter is “the choicest food among barbarian tribes.” Well, they weren't that wrong (the Romans I mean). Milk after childhood is not that beneficial. And a taste for butter soon leads to empty calories and deep fried Mars bars...
- pionar 5y ago[citation needed] Milk after childhood is still beneficial. It supplies protein, and many vitamins and minerals. Butter is not a "gateway" drug.
- cies 5y ago> Remembering When Only Barbarians Drank Milk It's how I still feel about it. The way cows are treated (caged, fed unnatural food, preventive antibiotics, babies taken away right after birth, the misery of slaughter) shows me that the act of paying for the products derived from cows is, frankly, quite barbarian to me (as in: not very sophisticated). Especially given that milk product are known for decades to be unhealthy for humans after the weaning stage.
- betwixthewires 5y agoI agree with you that many modern commercial dairy and meat farming practices are barbaric, but milk is a nutrient dense superfood, whole cultures subsisted for centuries eating basically just dairy products. Milk products are not bad for you.
- cies 5y ago> nutrient dense superfood Is marketing speak my friend dont fall for it. Oil is nutirent dense. Sugar is. It means nothing. Maybe you mean "micronutrient / calorie" dense. But even that, due to the high calorie content is not so true (lettuce is much more dense in this sense). > cultures subsisted for centuries eating basically just dairy products Subsisted in harsh climates on dairy (mainly in winter) as a supplement to their grain based food: yes, that happened in many areas. But that does not mean it's healthy. > whole cultures subsisted for centuries eating basically just dairy product which?
- betwixthewires 5y agoThe Mongol, Uyghur and other central Asian cultures subsisted almost entirely on horse and goat milk for centuries. Many northern European cultures subsisted almost entirely on dairy for periods in history. Nomadic pastoral cultures did not have land to grow grain, as they were nomadic, they lived basically off of foraged plants, dairy and meat of animals that they no longer could use for other purposes. Later, when these cultures moved away from a nomadic lifestyle and began growing grain yes, dairy was supplemental, but for many of them for centuries they subsisted largely on dairy products. Milk is a nutrient dense superfood, whether grifters like to toss the terms around or not. That's the whole point of mammals creating the substance to begin with. It exists to provide complete nutrition all by itself.
- throwaway59553 5y agoBarbarians having better (or at least more) sources of proteins seems to be a recurring theme. The Huns and Mongols probably ate more meat than the average farmer from the lands they conquered on their path. I wonder if this isn't similar to the recent push to substitute meat with these fake meats, which are nothing but highly processed vegetable oils, some shady vegetable proteins and lots of flavouring, all mixed together, and the same to all those "milks", from soy to almonds.
- netcan 5y agoThis is more about "barbarian" as a concept than dairy, IMO. No use trying to define it specifically, the word cannot be separated from its snobbery. In any case, almost every non modern piece of human culture comes from barbarians, inventions, customs, livelihoods. The iconic Roman gladius. Every Egyptian military paradigm: swords, chariots, & such came from barbarian pastoralist. Pastoralist cultures are very poorly recorded, as a rule. These societies can get pretty big, and seem to federate easily. Wealth accumulation happens naturally, with the size of the herd. Trade tends to happen a lot. Some pastoralist cultures may have specialized in trade very early. A nomadic traveller culture who own pack animals are well placed for this. Seasonal migrations sometimes necessitate bimodal society structures, say independant family groups in one season and a large tribal hierarchy in another. They can merge into large super groups. Cultural exchange between groups, bilingualism and such happen a lot. IMO all these make it likely that many economic and political institutions (eg voting, accounting, etc) originate with pastoralists, showing up in historical records only after being adopted by settled cultures with civilized urban centres. Milk is likely one of those things. If your culture revolves around goats, horses, cows or such... dairy is probably a major part of your culture. Another, snobby culture that eats less dairy comes in and says "yuck, so much milk." Romans had milk, but they didn't have milk 100 different ways. Shepards and such were low on the Roman hierarchies. What Romans had was trees. Trees, and orchard ready land were wealth. Trees stayed put, could be tended by slaves. You could have a nice villa overlooking your trees. That's civilized.
- hyperpallium2 5y agoYes, the separation and mixing of pastoralist cultures sounds like it would evolve innovations more quickly than homogenous, standardized, organized city states. Could also apply to the evolution of the mutation for lactose-tolerance in adulthood. “You want the taste of dried leaves boiled in water?” “Er, yes. With milk.” “Squirted out of a cow?” “Well in a manner of speaking, I suppose…” “I’m going to need some help with this one.”
- smorgusofborg 5y agoI think this is ignoring Roman and Chinese urban density which pushed them into this difference over generations. Much of the food necessary to feed a city was imported on a scale and timeline similar to global trade today. I don't know anyone who buys foreign fresh milk and butter but cheese is different.
- naturalauction 5y agoThe “Anchor” brand of butter in the UK used to be made in and exported from New Zealand between 1924 and 2012.
- wazoox 5y agoOn this subject, be sure to read acoup.blog piece on how the Mongol (and other steppe nomads) could raid hundreds of kilometres from their bases by using mares that would provide them both drink and food while travelling light and fast (no chariots, no soldiers on foot). Milk as a strategic military advantage!
- macrowhat 5y agoWhy is this crap on hackernews? Get over it, we're gonna keep eating sweet delicious cows.