What are Heirloom Microbes?

• In Event: Nonhuman Innovations, Nonhuman Disruptions - II: Care & Mattering

Abstract

My paper will provide an ethnographic account of a multidisciplinary research project on the deep history of the relations between humans and dairying microbes. The stated aim of Heirloom Microbes is to obtain a better understanding of the spread of dairying across Eurasia by investigating the microbes that live in milk. Through the microbiological analysis of contemporary dairy microbes collected in Mongolia, Jordan and the European Alps, and a comparison with archaeological samples, the project team will build phylogenetic trees to illuminate the microbes' genetic relations. From those they want to deduct the movement of dairy animals from the Levante where they were first domesticated to Europe and the Eastern Steppe. By proxy, this will shed light on the migratory routes of the human pastoralists who lived with these animals.
The paper will explore what living and working with microbes means for contemporary dairy producers and natural scientists and what forms of speculation they engage in when they imagine ways of human-microbe interactions in the past. Finally, it will ask how modern forms of work with microbes can become a form of care for the human past.

Author

• Matthaeus Rest, MPI for the Science of Human History