Who discovered you could get milk from a cow and what did they think they were doing?

Answer 1

Apparently, cow's milk was first used as human food in the Middle East when they were domesticated between 9000 and 8000BC.

It was a more efficient way of getting nutrients from an animal - if you kill it you get the equivalent of a year's worth of milk, but if you don't you get years of milk.

Answer 2

Early humans domesticating cattle would have observed calves suckling cows, and early on they would have realised that cattle produce a surplus of milk which can be consumed by people just as easily.

Other than the obvious - meat and leather - milk production would likely have been a major force behind the drive to domesticate wild cattle, which, alongside the development of writing and the taming of fire, marked the beginning of civilisation.

I'd also like to add that the likelihood is that it could well have been early /women/ (specifically the mothers), not early /men/, who made these early observations and put two and two together: but sadly, archaeology has yet to discover the earthly remains of the first milkmaid.

Answer 3

Well, in 2000 B.C., there were immigrations to Europe and India, we came from the eastern steppes, each 200 years there was a "wave" of immigrations.
So there we were, just walking to the west, with some cattle, sheep, I don't know exactly what it was, but it gives milk, because we drank it. There wasn't any agriculture, we just travelled and to get some food we drank some milk from our cows, sheep, whatever. It was good for those little cows etc., so why couldn't we drink it?
We started to drink milk because we had to, so nobody actually discovered it. We just had to, it was necessary.

I say "we" because I'm European, I don't want to insult anybody or so. : )

Answer 4

It wasn't really discovered. It just followed the thought process of nursing, things that all mammals do, and that it is a source of nourishment. That and cows are common livestock animals, being raised for meat anyway, so to get milk from them just increases the economical value of them.

Answer 5

I think we were all animals back then. We probably lived pretty closely with the cows and ate and drank pretty much the same as the animals around us so it wasn't such a stretch back then to drink their milk.

Answer 6

This is what I think happened:
Some dude walkin' up to some random cow,
squeezing on it's pink nipple tiddies
to fink that white stuff called milk,
then drank it! My question is, who is so desprate that they want tit's so bad they start squeezing on some cows, just to get milk! Who was really that desprate?!?

Answer 7

i might pick to be high quality and say he became an intuitive philosopher, yet all signs and warning signs element to him violating the cow. EIDT: some human beings say he became staring on the offspring yet i don't understand... I recommend if I see that i'm not gonna say "hi the child Cow likes to suck on it, enable me circulate squeeze it and drink what comes out." do merely not sound appropriate to me.

Answer 8

I would say the farmers of this world, and they extract milk to get money by selling it

Answer 9

It was probably the same desperate cave man who said, "Dang, I think I'll eat this oyster and wash it down with the same stuff that calf's been drinking."

Answer 10

Probably the same person that thought it would be good to eat something that came out of a chicken's a*s?