history of milk....

Animal milk is first known to have been used as human food during the Secondary Products Revolution, around 5000BC. It is assumed that when animals such as cattle were first domesticated, it was only for purposes of meat. Dairy products obtained from the animals proved to be a more efficient way of turning uncultivated grasslands into sustenance: the food value of an animal killed for meat can be matched by perhaps one year's worth of milk from the same animal, which will keep producing milk — in convenient daily portions — for years.

Milk byproducts found inside stone age pottery from Turkey indicate processed milk was consumed in 6500 BC some thousands of years before the ability for adult humans to digest unprocessed milk had evolved.

DNA evidence extracted from Neolithic skeletons indicates that a thousand years later in 5500 BC people in Northern Europe were like all other peoples of the time and were still lactose intolerant. Earthenware vessels found in England from a thousand years after this in 4500 BC contain milk byproducts indicating milk was used in some form although perhaps not drunk directly.

Milk was first delivered in bottles on January 11, 1878. The day is now remembered as Milk Day and is celebrated annually. The town of Harvard, Illinois also celebrates milk in the summer with a festival known as "Milk Days". Theirs is a different tradition meant to celebrate dairy farmers in the "Milk Capital of the World."