Originating from the Pastoral Neolithic of North Africa, this vivid and evocative picture of overlapping perspectives of cattle is characteristic of this Saharan prehistoric art and demonstrates that cattle clearly played a significant part in the lives and ideology of ancient human groups living in the Green Sahara during the Holocene

More than 7,000 years ago, prehistoric people in the African Sahara were making dairy products, such as butter, yogurt and cheese.

The discovery, based on the identification of dairy fats on ancient pottery shards found in Libya, is the first to provide a definitive date for early dairy farming in Africa. Adding to findings from Europe and the Middle East, the study points to milk products as a main reason why people in many places may have chosen to give up the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favor of a more settled existence.

(Source: futurenow321)