Bronze Age ‘bog butter’ was made from dairy

[Still Waters]

Within Ireland’s peat bogs lurk many archaeological treasures. Everything from centuries-old bodies, to Bronze Age weapons, to a medieval Book of Psalms have been pulled from the country’s mossy wetlands. Among the more ubiquitous artifacts found in Irish bogs is “bog butter”—yellow, waxy globs of fat that were carefully wrapped in wooden containers or animal bladders before being deposited into bogs for reasons that are not entirely clear.

Now, as Jennifer Ouellette reports for Ars Technica, a new study has found that Irish bog butters are precisely what they sound like: very, very old butter.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/irish-bog-butter-actually-made-dairy-study-finds-180971724/

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/study-finds-people-in-ireland-and-scotland-made-bog-butter-for-millennia/

[Piney]

33 minutes ago, Still Waters said:

Within Ireland’s peat bogs lurk many archaeological treasures. Everything from centuries-old bodies, to Bronze Age weapons, to a medieval Book of Psalms have been pulled from the country’s mossy wetlands. Among the more ubiquitous artifacts found in Irish bogs is “bog butter”—yellow, waxy globs of fat that were carefully wrapped in wooden containers or animal bladders before being deposited into bogs for reasons that are not entirely clear.

 

Keep them chilled or offerings. If butter was sacred to the Indo-Aryans of India and used as a offering, it was certainly sacred to the Celts whose belief systems share the same parent and have a close relationship to. 

[Unusual Tournament]

8 hours ago, Piney said:

Keep them chilled or offerings. If butter was sacred to the Indo-Aryans of India and used as a offering, it was certainly sacred to the Celts whose belief systems share the same parent and have a close relationship to. 

...stop spreading rumours...

[Piney]

1 hour ago, Captain Risky said:

...stop spreading rumours...

Your such a racist. 

[Ozymandias]

It is quite understandable that Irish academics would want to resolve this issue but the result is hardly surprising, is it? Ireland is naturally a dairy farming country.

Neither is it surprising that butter production in Ireland goes back 3,500 years. We have a comparative economic advantage in that respect that people evolving socio-economically would have discovered and continued through the generations.

One question that has not been answered definitively is why bury butter in churns in the bog in the first place?

I don't eat butter anymore but loved it on crusty bread when I was younger. One of lives great pleasures.