THE COW AND THE HUMAN RACE

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1680, 29 October 1925, Page 6

THE COW AND THE HUMAN RACE

HATE BEEN INSEPARABLE SINCE THE DAWN OF HISTORY.

3000 YEARS BEFORE CHRIST.

The importance of milk as human food has been recognised from the very earliest history of the human race, as disclosed by tablets, symbolic data, and recorded history, says the National Dairy Council. These historical records show that the milk and its products as human food have played a tremendous part in the development of the human race. .Beginning with the earliest race that we have any evidence of, namely, the Aryans, and coming down through the centuries from that time to the present day, we find that those races and tribes of people who were most healthful and the most physically and mentally perfect were the ones that lived very largely by their herds and used freely milk and its products.

The dairy cow has been inseparably connected with the human race, and her milk used as man’s most important food during all past centuries, of which we have knowledge. With some races during the early times, more than 3000 years before Christ, the milking of the cow was accompanied by religious ceremonies. Some of these ceremonies still continue in remote parts of the world. The Aryans made the dairy cow part of their religion. Many of the races following the Aryans deemed the milk of the cow so vital to their life that they likewise deified her in many forms and pictured her in various constellations of the heavens. In many instances the most valued tribute the victors in war exacted from the vanquished in those early times was the cow and ofttimes her products; all of, which indicates how dependent these early peoples were on the cow and how much they prized her milk and food.

When we come to biblical history we find that milk is mentioned fortynine times from Genesis to Revelations, butter and cheese several times, and the cow very frequently. More than three thousand years ago the Hebrews expressed their hope of finding contentment and the requirements for their bodily, needs in a land “ flowing with milk and honey.’ These early people lived largely on milk and the products of the dairy cow, and, according to available historical information, those tribes which thus lived were of splendid physical and mental development, and dominated during their times. This history is spread over the plains of Central Asia and to the Holy Land and the country surrounding it. Some of our most eminent food scientists state that the tribal supremacy of certain groups of these peoples is accounted for by the ■fact that they were liberal users In modern times we have the same evidence. Those nationalities which live in countries where the dairy cow is prominent are physically strong and mentally efficient, and this difference is not accounted for by climatic conditions because the Arabs, both ancient and modern, who live in the desert region and who have been liberal users of milk in various forms, are strong and splendid physical specimens, alert and active, and capable of great endurance, notwithstanding the heat and the barrenness of the country in which they live. Dietary scientists who have conducted extensive and exhaustive research in connection with the food value of milk and its importance in the human diet, almost universally agree that milk is the most perfectlybalanced food we have for the human system, especially for growing children. —Pacific Dairy Review.