Making Milk: Mongolia’s Unique Role in Dairy’s History

Christina Warinner, Professor of Anthropology and Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

Milk is both ancient and enigmatic. First transformed into dairy products over 9,000 years ago in the Near East, its production required the domestication of not only animals, but also microorganisms. Dairy technologies spread across Europe, Africa, and Asia, reaching as far as Mongolia 5,000 years ago. Today, dairy products are produced and consumed worldwide; annual global milk and dairy production exceeds 900 million tons. And yet, the majority of the world’s population is estimated to be lactose intolerant. How did such an unlikely and often indigestible food become a staple of global cuisines? Christina Warinner examines the long and often surprising history of milk in Mongolia, where more than ninety percent of the population should be lactose intolerant—but is not. This talk takes a fresh look at the history of milk in Asia and its unexpected ethnographic and archaeological paradoxes. Far from familiar, milk is an ancient food with a modern scientific mystery at its heart.

Advance registration recommended for in-person and online attendance.

Free admission. Free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage.

Presented by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard Museum of Natural History, and the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture in collaboration with the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past; Department of Anthropology; Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University.