Neolithic dairy farming at the extreme of agriculture in northern Europe.

The conventional ‘Neolithic package’ comprised animals and plants originally
domesticated in the Near East. As farming spread on a generally
northwest trajectory across Europe, early pastoralists would have been
faced with the challenge of making farming viable in regions in which the
organisms were poorly adapted to providing optimal yields or even surviving.
Hence, it has long been debated whether Neolithic economies were ever
established at the modern limits of agriculture. Here, we examine food residues
in pottery, testing a hypothesis that Neolithic farming was practiced
beyond the 60th parallel north. Our findings, based on diagnostic biomarker
lipids and d13C values of preserved fatty acids, reveal a transition at ca 2500
BC from the exploitation of aquatic organisms to processing of ruminant
products, specifically milk, confirming farming was practiced at high latitudes.
Combining this with genetic, environmental and archaeological
information, we demonstrate the origins of dairying likely accompanied
an incoming, genetically distinct, population successfully establishing this
new subsistence ‘package’.