Babies from prehistoric cultures were fed animal milk in small ceramic pots, according to a study that suggests bottle-feeding is not a modern phenomenon.

The drinking vessels, which were excavated from children’s graves in Bavaria, date to between 450 and 1,200BC. They have teat-shaped spouts, appear designed to be easily held by an older baby or toddler and one is shaped as an imaginary animal, suggesting it may have doubled as a toy.

Julie Dunne, a chemist at the University of Bristol and lead author, said: “These very small, evocative, vessels give us valuable information on how and what babies were fed thousands of years ago, providing a real connection to mothers and infants in the past.”

The finding suggests that a shift towards weaning babies earlier could have played a crucial role in a population boom that occurred in the Neolithic period, around the same time that some humans moved away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle towards one that depended on crops and animals. “It could help explain why Neolithic women can suddenly have many more babies,” said Dunne. “There’s so much more to it than the baby bottle.”

Small feeding vessels, made from clay, first appear in Europe in the Neolithic (at around 5,000 BC), and become more commonplace during the bronze and iron ages that follow. However, it has not been clear whether the pots were specifically made for babies – it has also been suggested they were used to feed the sick or elderly.

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The latest findings provide a vital link, showing that three vessels found in child burial sites were filled with animal milk. A chemical analysis of lipids that survived in the bottom of the pot suggests that the milk would have come from a cow, goat or sheep.

The children that the bottles were found alongside had ages of between one to two years, around two and under six years.

Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, a co-author from the Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, said: “Bringing up babies in prehistory was not an easy task. We are interested in researching cultural practices of mothering, which had profound implications for the survival of babies.”

She said that the development of bottles could have made mothering a more “collective” responsibility, at a time when people were starting to live in larger groups, with some settlements of several hundred people. Stopping breastfeeding infants at an earlier age could also have led to shorter gaps between siblings.

Rebay-Salisbury, who is leading a major project on motherhood in prehistory, said that there is a growing realisation that studying how children lived in the past could provide crucial insights into ancient societies. “For a long time, people were just interested in swords and men,” she said. “Gradually we’re discovering that there were other people as well who deserve our attention, including children and mothers.”

The team is planning to analyse other, similar artefacts. “Similar vessels, although rare, do appear in other prehistoric cultures, such as Rome and ancient Greece, across the world,” said Dunne. “Ideally, we’d like to carry out a larger geographic study and investigate whether they served the same purpose.”

The analysis is published in the journal Nature.