Whether spread on toast, used in pans as a cooking ingredient, a vital part of sauces or clarified to produce beautiful organic ghee, butter is a part of many people’s diets in varying amounts.

It has long been an important foodstuff in one form or another, and as early as 2500 BC it was even noted to have cultural significance in Sumerian cuneiform tablets from the era, where it was connected to Inanna, the goddess of fertility.

Even in places where oil or ghee was preferred, such as Rome and Greece where butter has a tendency to spoil in the heat, it was still considered to be a delicate food and one that was most often used as a healing balm by the Romans.

However, thousands of years before even these early mentions of butter, one man based in Neolithic Africa might have stumbled upon one of the great culinary inventions completely by accident.

An Accidental Inventor

According to the book Butter: A Rich History by Elaine Khosrova, the invention of butter came about as an incredibly important act of serendipity.

According to Ms Khosrova, a sheepherder was travelling on a pack animal, guiding his flock from one region to another, drinking milk for sustenance on his way that was stored in a sheepskin pouch.

However, at one point after some particularly tumultuous travels over difficult terrain, the unnamed shepherd went to take a drink only to find that his milk had shaken so much it had formed buttermilk and butter in the pouch.

As written by Ms Khosrova, this combination of goats, sheep and yak milk was discovered on a 

limestone tablet, and the story resembles how butter was initially churned using bags of leather and constant shaking rather than active churning.

It is a fascinating start of the story, and at some point, it would move from an accidental discovery to a deliberate invention, although one that would form out of many different cultures due to the ways in which climate affects butter production.

Countries with warmer temperatures, which included both Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, tended to opt for oil instead of butter, whilst India would clarify their butter to form ghee instead, which has become widely celebrated and continues to be an essential ingredient in certain culinary traditions

They opted away from unclarified butter for the same reasons; butter spoiled in the warm weather, and before the development of effective refrigeration, milk tended to be turned into cheese if it could not completely be used outside of countries in Northern Europe that could keep butter for longer.

This is part of the reason why there are several references by Roman historians somewhat mockingly describing people who consume butter outside of medicinal purposes.

This would rapidly change, not least because the fall of the Roman Empire changed the cultural centre of Europe. Throughout much of the Middle Ages, butter was eaten by a majority of people, often even packed into barrels and buried as a form of preservation known as Bog Butter.