Can Civilisation happen without milk?

"A civilization is a large group of people who share certain advanced ways of living and working." Kids Britannica

I gave up on Latin at school around the age of 14 or 15. I wasn't the only one and so the school devised a small class of around half a dozen of us who discussed the notion of civilisation with the less senior of the school's two latin teachers. Her name was Miss Bone and looking back they were some of the most interesting classes I took at school. Because, taking ancient Crete as an example, she asked questions, which amounted to the overriding one - 'What is civilisation'. She didn't just tell us - as most of our education did in those days, she asked questions and made us find our own answers. Of course she led us in the direction she wanted to go, but we were encouraged to discuss it.

I was reminded of all of that, as I looked for a definition of 'civilisation' today and found very unsatisfactory ones:

• Oxford - "the stage of human social and cultural development and organisation that is considered most advanced."

• Cambridge - "a highly developed culture, including its social organisation, government, laws, and arts, or the culture of a social group or country at a particular time."

• Merriam-Webster - "a relatively high level of cultural and technological development

  specifically : the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained"

Which is why in the end I settled for the Britannica Kids one at the top of the page -"A civilisation is a large group of people who share certain advanced ways of living and working."

Although I don't think that is what our little school group came to think either. Such definitions seem to require big buildings and engineering feats. Advanced seems to be a key word, but advanced how?

The Merriam-Webster definition that insists on writing, excludes several cultural groups in the world today - such as our own Australian Aborigines. And I'm sure that the Aborigines themselves, and the many who respect their culture would vehemently insist that they are civilised. Or do they have a culture rather than a civilisation? Personally I think the two words are virtually synonymous.

I think our long ago school group, came to the conclusion that civilisation was more than grand buildings, cities and great art - it also had to include notions of justice and order and other such philosophical concepts - the best qualities of human nature I guess. It was also noted that most, no all, of the so-called great civilisations that have come and gone throughout human history, have acted in very uncivilised ways - they still do. Civilisation is supposed to be good isn't it, although mostly it has not been?

Civilisation is said to have begun around 10,000 to 9,000 BC in Mesopotamia - which I'm sure we all know - although the Indus Valley, Egypt and the area around the Yellow River in China also began to develop the same characteristics of those other civilisations at around the same time. Fundamentally they stopped hunting and gathering, and a nomadic lifestyle and began to stay in one place - first domesticating plants, and later animals. It is called the Neolithic Revolution and began before writing and building large cities and imposing buildings. They were simple settlements, but with all of the later features - on a smaller and simpler scale.

But what on earth does all of that have to do with milk? Well I think it may indeed have something to do with the ever present debate here in Australia as to whether Aboriginal society was civilised, whIch I think about every now and again, because of all the somewhat defiant defence of their culture. I think about it every now and then and today I realised that Aborigines did not have milk, until they were colonised because Australia has no animals suitable for milking. Is that yet another reason for some to call them uncivilised? There has been a lot of somewhat defensive emphasis on what they have achieved which is directly related to the misconceptions we have long held of their civilisation. They had art, laws, belief systems, structured societies and so on. There is evidence that they farmed fish, and harvested grains. It is certainly true that they did not have many of the things we associate with civilisation in the 'grand' sense - but does that make them uncivilised?

Once again I have strayed. Enough of the Aborigines. Back to milk. And here's another question which I had not thought of, although I should have: "why did the first man to milk a cow milk it in the first place?", which came from an interesting article on the Medium website by Lana Valente - The Origins of Milk - for man is fundamentally lactose intolerant.

The first animals to be domesticated were not domesticated for their milk. They were domesticated as companions and protection (dogs), and for meat - around 8,000BC. Hence the question of why would they milk a goat - generally agreed to be the first source of milk (and meat), or a cow if it made them sick? The general consensus is desperation and starvation - which is better than feeling sick. Or just the old "it seemed like a good idea at the time" philosophy. Gradually through consumption of milk, lactose tolerance occurred around 5,000-4,000BC, about the same time that humans began making cheese and yoghurt. Butter didn't happen until around 2,500BC.

As I said, it is generally agreed that the first animals to be milked were goats, - well yaks in Asia. And the first 'cows' to be milked were not cows as we know them today, but aurochs, which look very similar but are larger. And speaking of larger - the American Indians only had bison which were too large and too aggressive to milk. Besides they apparently have small udders, and there were no other animals suitable for milking. As in Australia - or in the middle of a jungle. You can't milk a kangaroo. South America too - they had llamas, but never milked them, and even the water buffalo of Asia were bred with other animals to be less aggressive.

I began this article thinking that milk had only been produced in so-called civilisations, and that it was therefore a precondition for civilisation itself. Which it turns out, like many things that people say you have to have before you can claim to be a civilisation, is just not true - even if you go the belligerent, city based, grandiose buildings, and high art route. I mean look at the South Americans, who had no milk until the colonisers arrived.

So I'm back to my beginning really - what is civilisation? It probably depends on who you are as to how you define it. Can the people who built Machu Picchu and created rather formidable but arresting art, whilst at the same time doing unspeakable things in the service of a complicated and very structured but cruel form of religion - and government - be called a civilisation, and an apparently relatively peaceful, cultured with complicated social system and yet nevertheless technologically backward people like the Aboriginal people not be recognised as civilised?

I suspect this will be argued over forever.

But what would we do without milk? Milk, grains, meat and fish - first foods to be altered from their natural state.

YEARS GONE BY

September 3

2024 - Simple essentials - Nigel's first recipes

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Killing two birds with one stone

2021 - When you're out of ideas

2020 - Missing

2019 - Nothing

2018 - A word from Julia Child

2017 - A blast from the past - The Royal Hawaiian

2016 - Sausage sizzles