The horse people of the steppes were known as hippomolgoi galakto-phagoi, “mare-milking milk-drinking Scythians,” since Homeric times. The Amazons nourished their babies with mare’s milk, according to Phi-lostratus. He was right, but that milk would have been fermented first. Because of its high lactose content mare’s milk is a strong laxative; it requires fermentation to be a viable source of nutrition. During fermentation, lactobacilli bacteria acidify the milk and yeasts create carbonated ethanol. While the milk is fermenting, it must be agitated or churned like butter. The result is mildly alcoholic koumiss, high in calories and vitamins, that can be stored longer than fresh milk. The alcoholic content can be enriched by a process developed by the nomads called “freeze distillation”—freezing, thawing, removing the ice crystals, and refreezing, and repeating the process until the desired potency is reached.7
Herodotus described the ancient Scythian milk-fermenting process on a large scale, probably observed among the settled Scythians around the Black Sea. “The milk is poured into deep wooden casks, then stirred vigorously until it ferments.” The early traveler William of Rubruck, who trekked across the steppes in about AD 1250, offered more details. “As the nomads churn and beat the milk it begins to ferment and bubble up like new wine.” He described the effervescent koumiss as pungent tasting and intoxicating. It “makes the inner man most joyful!” Smaller batches of koumiss would have been fermented in leather bags by nomad families on the move. In Inner Asia, it was the custom to hang the sack where pass-ersby would periodically punch the bag to agitate the koumiss. Koumiss is still prepared by steppe peoples from the Black Sea to western China.8
How ancient is koumiss.? Very ancient indeed. Evidence for the great antiquity of koumiss (kumys, kumiss, qimiz) comes from historical linguistics and from archaeology. Three very ancient alcoholic beverages are mead (fermented honey), kvass (beer), and koumiss. Kvass and mead have cognates in Proto-Indo-European, while koumiss derives from the ancient Central Asian Turkic language family. Koumiss drinking originated along with the domestication of the horse in Central Asia. Milking mares is easier than milking cows, and mares produce almost as much milk. About forty-five hundred years ago Eurasian nomads perfected the
Special technique required for milking mares. The mares graze on their own during the day and return to their foals in camp. The foal starts the flow and then is held close to the mare’s side while the milker kneels on one knee with the container propped on the other, and with arms wrapped around the mare’s hind leg. The lipids from horse milk can now be identified on artifacts from very ancient burials. Archaeologists have discovered bowls containing residue of mare’s milk in Botai culture sites, ca. 3500 BC, in northern Kazakhstan.9 (The Botai, early do-mesticators of horses, engraved horse bones with tattoo-like patterns; Chapter 6.)
Koumiss is prominent in Scythian burials from the Black Sea to the Altai. Special utensils for beating or stirring koumiss and drinking vessels with traces of horse milk are very common grave goods of both men and women. For example, the Golden Warrior of Issyk (chapter 4) was accompanied by koumiss beaters and bowls that held mare’s milk. Archaeologists excavating the rich cemetery at Chertomlyk (Ukraine), where several warrior women were buried with their weapons, recovered a magnificent silver vase elaborately decorated with birds, lions, and griffins and a frieze of Scythians training their horses. The famous Chertomlyk Vase was “evidently meant for kumys, as it has a sieve in the neck” and three spouts shaped like lions and a horse at the base. If so, it was probably ceremonial or used for serving, since wooden and leather vessels would be more suited to the fermentation process. In the grave of the tattooed Ice Princess of the Ukok Plateau the Russian archaeologists discovered a wooden stirring stick in a cup with a handle carved in the shape of two snow leopards. Inside the cup was the residue of the koumiss that would sustain her in the Other World. The remains of koumiss and chunks of horse meat from the departed’s last meals and mourners’ feasts confirm the ancient Greek descriptions of the milk-and-meat diet of steppe nomads, many of whom who depend on these same staples today.10
World History
