Milk Culture in Eurasia - Constructing a Hypothesis of Monogenesis-Bipolarization

The invention of milking and milk use created a new mode of subsistence called pastoralism. On rangelands across Eurasia, pastoralists subsist by extensive animal husbandry and by processing their animals' milk. Based on the author's fieldwork over more than two decades, this book details the processing systems and uses of milk observed in pastoralist and farm households in West Asia, South Asia, North Asia, Central Asia, the Tibetan Plateau, and Europe and the Caucasus. Milk culture in each region is characterized by its processing technology and use of milk, and characteristics common to wider geographical spheres are identified. Inclusion of case studies from the literature expands the continent-wide perspective and provides further indications of how milk culture developed and diffused historically. The inferences drawn are expressed in the author's monogenesis­-bipolarization hypothesis of Eurasian milk culture, that milking and milk processing had a single center of origin in West Asia, and that the technology involved the spread from there across the continent, developing distinct characteristics in northern and southern spheres. Finally, because milk culture underpins pastoralism as a mode of subsistence, the typology and theory of pastoralism are re-examined from the standpoint of milk culture.

Masahiro Hirata is a professor in the Department of Human Science, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Japan. As a graduate student at Kyoto University, Japan, he worked at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Syria in the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) program, where he conducted research into the human ecology of pastoralists in Syria. Since then, for more than 25 years, he has carried out fieldwork in arid regions of the Eurasian continent, focusing on subsistence of pastoralists. His research interests include processing and uses of milk worldwide, subsistence strategies of pastoralism, and the origin and spread of pastoralism. He has published many papers and several books in the field of pastoralism and milk culture and is the chairperson of the Hokkaido Ethnological Society, Japan.