Mare milking and fermented milk (kumis)
Ordeño de yeguas y leche fermentada (kumis)
- Date
- c. 3500 BCE (discutido) · confidence low
- Place
- Botai, northern Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan
- Credited to
- Botai culture (finding by Alan Outram and colleagues, 2009)
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Dairy-fat residues in Botai pottery indicate mare milking over 5,000 years ago, the basis of drinks such as kumis that dominate steppe diets. The interpretation is controversial.
It rests on early domestication at Botai, which is disputed: other work (2018) links Botai horses to Przewalski's horse and not the domestic one. Milking and kumis are securely documented only by ancient writers (Herodotus) many centuries later.
What it led to
- a nomadic diet based on fermented mare's milk, prominent among Scythians and Mongols
- an argument for early horse domestication in the steppes
- origin of a drink of ritual and diplomatic value across Eurasia