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The owner of our four clay cows would have been laid in an oval pit. He would have been placed in a crouched position, lying on a mat of rushes, facing the setting sun. And around him were his grave goods - items of value for his journey into the afterlife, five and a half thousand years ago; among them his four clay cows. Cow models like this one are quite common, so we can be fairly sure that cows must have played a significant part in Egyptian daily life - such an important part, in fact, that they couldn't be left behind when the owner passed through death and on into the afterlife. How did this humble beast become so important to human beings? Martin Jones, Professor of Archaeological Science at Cambridge University, is an expert in the archaeology of food:
我们这些小陶牛的墓主被长眠着一座椭圆型的土坑里。他被放置成为蜷缩的姿势，躺在一张蒲草垫上，面向落日的方向。他身边环绕着他的随葬品，都是一些在他踏上来生旅程上可以用到的物品，而这些掩埋在五千五百年岁月尘埃中的物品，就包括他的四只小陶牛。类似的陶牛模型在那时的埃及相当普遍，所以我们可以肯定牛在当时人类日常生活发挥了相当重要的作用。作用性大到，即使主人的死亡也不能使他与他的牛群分开，要一同带往来生。那么这种不起眼的牲畜是如何变得对人类如此重要的呢？剑桥大学的考古学教授马丁·琼斯是食物考古专家：
If we think of the human diet in two steps - one is with early modern humans, there is an enormous adventurous diversification. We were eating everything - seeds, fish, mammoths, birds - anything that moves we are finding a way to eat it. And then there is a second episode, which starts around ten thousand years ago, where we seem to home in on a small number of target species, particularly grass seeds what we call cereals, underground tubers, and a small number of animals.'
“如果我们把人类饮食分成两个阶段，第一阶段便是早期现代人种，当时人类的饮食范围真是一种庞大而冒险的多样化。几乎什么东西都吃——种子、鱼、猛犸象、鸟类等等。只要那东西会动，我们就会想方设法抓来吃。然后第二阶段，大概开始于一万年前左右， 我们开始把注意力集中在种类相对较少的食物品种上，最多的是草籽，或者我们所说的谷物，地下块茎，还有就是极少数的动物。
