📜 Milk in culture and language

Milk in culture and language covers the images, names and expressions that grew out of milk: from the Milky Way in the sky to milk teeth, the milk stage of grain and sayings such as «a land of milk and honey» or «wet behind the ears».

The roots of these images are very old. An analysis of fat residues in more than 2,200 pottery vessels from the Near East and southeastern Europe showed that milk was already in use in the 7th millennium BC. In Europe dairying has been widespread since the Neolithic.

The ancient Greeks saw milk even in the sky. Greek γάλα (genitive γάλακτος) means «milk», and Latin lac is related to it. Aristotle, Parmenides and Aratus used this word for the Milky Way, Euclid called it «the circle of milk», and later it became γαλαξίας κύκλος. According to the common etymology, the word «galaxy» comes from γαλαξίας.

The Roman author Hyginus retells several myths about this white circle in his «Astronomy». According to Eratosthenes, Juno unknowingly nursed the infant Mercury, and when she learned he was the son of Maia she pushed him away, so the spilled milk shines among the stars. In other versions Hercules was put to the breast of the sleeping Juno, or he suckled so greedily that he could not hold the milk in his mouth. In the «Metamorphoses» Ovid writes of a high road, conspicuous for its whiteness, which is called «Milky»: by it the gods go to the house of the Thunderer.

In Ukrainian the same band of stars is called the Chumak Way, and Ukrainian sayings about milk have their own English counterparts, such as «once bitten, twice shy». Everyday images belong here too, like the cat and a saucer of milk.