What can a 3,000-year-old baby bottle tell us about ancient food habits?
Archaeologists have unearthed 3,000-year-old baby bottles that are actually quite cute by 2021 standards, Inverse reports. Ceramic, footed, and sculptural, they’d be quite at home in many a hipster apartment. The bottles are more than just pretty objects, though: They hold exciting secrets about how people ate circa 1,000 B.C. An analysis of lipids tucked into the pores of the clay revealed that parents weaned their children on animal milk. Archaeologists are analyzing residue left in cooking vessels to learn more about foods consumed throughout history, and the level of detail they’re able to unearth (no pun intended) is frankly astounding. Not only can they suss out the difference between an urn that carried meat stew and a pot used to ferment cheese, they can also find chemical fingerprints suggesting the cook added cabbage.
