Milk teeth reveal medieval children

For modern children used to scoffing handfuls of sugary treats and tasty snacks, the diet of medieval youngsters would have come as something of a shock.

While medieval meals are popularly depicted as banquets with huge haunches of meat, cheese and hunks of bread, new research has revealed that for children, food was much more disappointing.

By studying the milk teeth of young people living during the 11th to 16th centuries, researchers found they lived on a diet of pap – flour, milk and egg yolk – and bread with broth.

The researchers were able to analyze tiny changes in the amount of wear on the molars from 44 children who died aged between one and eight-years-old.

They found most children seemed to be weaned by the age of one when they were fed mainly a diet of pap – an unappetising mixture of flour, milk and egg yolk – and panada, where bread was served in broth with butter.

From the age of seven the children had moved onto the more typical adult foods of the time.

Perhaps most surprisingly, however, the researchers found no difference between the microscopic levels of wear on the teeth of children from higher socio-economic classes compared to those from poorer families.

This suggests that while adults from wealthy backgrounds enjoyed the trappings of their financial status, children were not so lucky and tended to eat the same basic foods no matter what their family background was.

Dr Patrick Mahoney, an anthropologist who led the study said: ‘Diet did not vary with socio-economic status, which differs to previously reported patterns for adults.

‘This is one of the most intriguing findings from our study. Diet for adults during the medieval period was determined by status.

Source: Daily Mail

N.H.Kh