Earliest direct evidence of dairy farming found in Indus Valley Civilisation

Team Udayavani, Oct 26, 2020, 4:17 PM IST

A team of Indian and Canadian researchers have found the earliest direct evidence of dairy product processing. They found that dairy production began way back in third millennium BCE with Indus Civilisation’s emergence.

The researchers analysed absorbed lipid residues from fifty-nine ceramic sherds recovered from an agro-pastoral settlement that was occupied during the peak of the Indus period.

The study, published in the journal Nature, was led by Kalyan Sekhar Chakraborty, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and dates dairy production to 2500 BCE.

According  to Hindustan times, The results were based on molecular chemical analysis of residue in shards of pottery found at the archaeological site of Kotada Bhadli, a rural settlement located in Gujarat. Of the 59 samples studied, 22 showed the presence of dairy lipids.

Through a process called stable isotope analysis, the researchers were also able to identify the type of ruminant used for dairy, and concluded that these were cattle, like cows and buffalo, rather than goats and sheep.