Researchers Baffled as Warrior Skeletons Reveal Bronze Age Europeans Couldn't Drink Milk (sciencemag.org) 192
sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: About 3000 years ago, thousands of warriors fought on the banks of the Tollense river in northern Germany. They wielded weapons of wood, stone, and bronze to deadly effect: Over the past decade, archaeologists have unearthed the skeletal remains of hundreds of people buried in marshy soil. It's one of the largest prehistoric conflicts ever discovered. Now, genetic testing of the skeletons reveals the homelands of the warriors—and unearths a shocker about early European diets: These soldiers couldn't digest fresh milk...
The results leave scientists more puzzled than ever about exactly when and why Europeans began to drink milk. "Natural genetic drift can't explain it, and there's no evidence that it was population turnover either," says Christina Warinner, a geneticist at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved with the study. "It's almost embarrassing that this is the strongest example of selection we have and we can't really explain it."
Perhaps something about fresh milk helped people ward off disease in the increasingly crowded and pathogen-ridden European towns and villages of the Iron Age and Roman period, says the study's co-author. But he admits he's baffled too. "We have to find a reason why you need this drink."
The results leave scientists more puzzled than ever about exactly when and why Europeans began to drink milk. "Natural genetic drift can't explain it, and there's no evidence that it was population turnover either," says Christina Warinner, a geneticist at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved with the study. "It's almost embarrassing that this is the strongest example of selection we have and we can't really explain it."
Perhaps something about fresh milk helped people ward off disease in the increasingly crowded and pathogen-ridden European towns and villages of the Iron Age and Roman period, says the study's co-author. But he admits he's baffled too. "We have to find a reason why you need this drink."
Not a mystery (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's entirely possible that THIS group was intoler (Score:5, Insightful)
There benefit of being able to digest milk is clear.
I think what they find surprising is that "Europeans" couldn't digest milk at this particular time, then 1000-2000 years later they could.
The summary notes that all of the specimens have similar DNA, they seem to be from the same ethnic group. It is therefore possible that all of the ones they tested for this particular gene were the army of a particular group. Likely a group ruled not by a liberal democracy, but by a ruling family. It seems that the ruling family, whose genes were prevalent in society and in the soldiers, were often lactose intolerant. From that, the article assumes that "Europeans" were lactose intolerant.
The United States is kinda a strange country, historically, in that it's not based around an ethnic group or a thousand years of shared history. France is 77% French people (ethnic French), Germany is over 80% people, Japan is 98% ethnic Japanese people.
Even today, looking at the DNA of some Japanese people and generalizing to "Asians" would be highly incorrect. You can test Swedish people and say "Europeans", even after 5000 years of mixing since this battle. It's entirely possible that the DNA of this particular clan / tribe / group doesn't represent "Europeans".
Re:It's entirely possible that THIS group was into (Score:5, Insightful)
France is 77% French people (ethnic French)
That's a common misrepresentation of the statistics.
A 88.4% chunk of the French population is counted as "natural born citizens", a 9.7% chunk is counted as "immigrants", 7.1% chunk is counted as "Foreign nationals", the remainder is counted as "French by acquisition". Split along the "ethnic group", that becomes (rounded) 85% "white of European origin", 10% "north African", 3.5% "African" and 1.5% "Asian".
One big issue for ethnic statistics is that it is illegal to poll for for ethnic origin in France, as it is considered a protected class under the data protection law of 1978. One of the last officious ethnic group census (2004) placed the "ethnic French" group at 55% of the French population. That may even be a bit too high now as it was taken 16 years ago, but it's close enough to what I see around me.
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What actually is "ethnic French"? Say your great grandparents were German and your family moved to France, as has not been uncommon for thousands of years on a continent with land borders and regularly shifting political boundaries. Are you "ethnic French" or Germanic or something else?
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> Say your great grandparents were German and your family moved to France... Are you "ethnic French" or Germanic or something else?
That's German DNA, not French. Although France was actually a bad example. For the purposes of those numbers, it means at least one of your parents is French, recursively. I should have said Portugal, Norway, or Spain.
The US is called the melting pot because other countries generally aren't as much; Greek people look different from Irish people and have distinctly different
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"German DNA"? I thought that idea died with the 3ed Reich.
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I have read that a black person and a white person can have more genes in common than two white people or two black people.
From what *I* have read, that's actually rather misleading. It should be possible to distinguish a small number of distinct groups genetically.
For reasons that I do not understand, paler skin is favoured in many societies.
It's a status symbol of not having to work in the field. As long as people value not having to do hard work, they will perceive it positively.
Re:It's entirely possible that THIS group was into (Score:4, Interesting)
It should be pointed out that the ability to digest milk as an adult is a freak adaptation. I am not sure that most non-domesticated mammals can digest milk as adults. For example, I have read that putting out a saucer of milk to feed hedgehogs does not do them any good. It just gives them the shits. But household cats are OK drinking milk.
There is a theory that some domesticated animals are infantilised by deliberate selection by humans. With many breeds of dog, the snout is shorter than it is in wolves, and they have floppy ears, like puppies. The interesting point is that humans have done the same thing to themselves. A community of domesticated humans is called a civilisation.
Lactose tolerance must be a fairly recent genetic adaptation, because the benefit of it depends on the domestication of milk-producing animals such as cows and goats. So it is maybe only a few thousand years old. There would certainly be human populations without this adaptation, if their living did not depend on domesticated livestock.
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But household cats are OK drinking milk.
No.
It's not toxic to them but many cats are lactose intolerant and it can give them a stomach upset.
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It's not a "freak" adaptation. It's an adaptation.
Humans are a species that domesticates other species. The ability to use the nutrient syrup those species produce is a survival advantage. It's probably particularly advantageous in climates where you can't grow food all year round and may not have access to the sea; places like northern and inland Europe, and central Asia.
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Or that it mostly does but some little group somewhere could digest milk and proceeded to wipe these guys out.
Re:Ps - they lost, and died, so ending their DNA (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know why anybody ever bothers to pay scientists for any work at any time, when there are amazing super geniuses on Slashdot ready to come up with explanations quickly without any wasted time doing research or investigations or even reviewing the relevant subject matter. Even more amazing, if you want to discredit a colleagues paper, the Slashdotters will do it for free! Parents, don't let your kids take science classes, it's now a dead field, better that they become auto-tune pop stars.
Given that half of research fails reproduction (Score:2)
Given that about half the research papers don't survive attempts to reproduce it ...
Well, you can blindly trust whatever someone writes without engaging in any critical thinking if you want to. If you're going to do that, go ahead and read my papers. :)
I've actually come to the conclusion that one of my papers from the 1990s was probably a load of hooey, it's probably completely wrong. But I wrote it in scientific terms, so maybe that means it's guaranteed to be spot-on.
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Everyone knows that if someone says they are an authority on something you should just turn your brain off and do what they say. Authorities are never wrong, never biased, never ignorant and never stupid. I mean they spent so much on their degree so we should just give in to them anyway out of politeness really.
If one of them writes a paper that any layman can poke holes in with nothing more than common sense then the layman should be attacked for not having enough letters after his name and daring to chall
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Put head to head with no other information, a slashdot know-it-all versus an experienced professional in the field, why would anyone choose the slashdotter?
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Doesn't work that way. Sorry.
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Looks kinda like the nation that won, and therefore lived to spread their DNA, weren't lactose-intolerant.
No, it doesn't look like that at all.
There isn't even one single shred of evidence to come to that conclusion... what the hell is wrong with you?
You're looking for evidence that ancient people could fly.
You find 40 skeletons at the bottom of a cliff, but you know from other information that the population those skeletons came from was in fact 100 individuals.
Your conclusion? The other 60 clearly must have been able to fly.
No, dude.
Re: Ps - they lost, and died, so ending their DNA (Score:2)
There isn't even one single shred of evidence to come to that conclusion... what the hell is wrong with you?
Sure there is: Europeans 1,000 years later were able to process milk. That's not conclusive evidence, but it's certainly evidence.
You're looking for evidence that ancient people could fly.
You find 40 skeletons at the bottom of a cliff, but you know from other information that the population those skeletons came from was in fact 100 individuals.
Your conclusion? The other 60 clearly must have been able to fly.
That would only be a reasonable conclusion if, 1,000 years later, the majority of their descendants were able to fly.
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Sure there is: Europeans 1,000 years later were able to process milk. That's not conclusive evidence, but it's certainly evidence.
What? Who the fuck do you think "they" is.
They looked at a specific battle and noticed that none of the bodies carried an MCM6 variant that doesn't suppress expression of LCT. That is not evidence that the survivors had the gene. That's an easily falsifiable leap, with some pretty simple thought experiments.
That would only be a reasonable conclusion if, 1,000 years later, the majority of their descendants were able to fly.
No, it wouldn't.
That's where you continue to fail.
Just as an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it's also not evidence of existence.
Well, they aren't, so ...magical DNA? (Score:2)
Well, the descendents of the winners are in fact NOT lactose-intolerant. The fact is, the peoples who control Europe can digest lactose. They do have the gene that allows them to digest lactose.
They have the gene. So either they got that gene from their ancestors, or it popped up in some unexplainable way.
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Well, the descendents of the winners are in fact NOT lactose-intolerant. The fact is, the peoples who control Europe can digest lactose. They do have the gene that allows them to digest lactose.
You can't say that in the slightest. You must make so many bad conclusions :(
You do not know the phenotype of the winners. Period.
The fact is, this battle didn't determine control of Europe- and the larger fact here, is that lactose persistence isn't *that* common among Europeans.
Furthermore, that gene comes and goes among populations all throughout the world, and can arise and disappear within generations.
Lactose tolerance is not lactose persistence.
To remain lactose tolerant, all you need to do is ke
Re:It's entirely possible that THIS group was into (Score:5, Informative)
Uhhh.... Syphilis went to the old world from the new world. Not vice versa.
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It's not settled, but you may be right:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
At least some still point the finger at shepherds commiserating with their flocks in the Middle East. It's hard to prove it though.
Re:It's entirely possible that THIS group was into (Score:5, Funny)
Re: It's entirely possible that THIS group was int (Score:2)
The United States is kinda a strange country, historically, in that it's not based around an ethnic group or a thousand years of shared history.
It was, but blah blah blah
Sorry ... are you under the impression that the hundreds of warring tribes within the land which eventually became The United States were all one ethnic group with a thousand years of shared history?
That's pretty fucking ignorant dude.
BTW, Navajo is still as big as Ireland (Score:2)
By the way, the Navajo Nation is still here, and has sovereignty over an area the size of Ireland. The Choctaw Nation is as big as Turkey.
What's weird is that those nations are surrounded by the United States, a state that isn't really a nation, a sovereign political entity that lacks a cohesive culture.
Re: It's entirely possible that THIS group was int (Score:2)
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Its not just lactose that you can be intolerant to. You can be intolerant to some of the proteins, although this is more common in children.
Re:Not a mystery (Score:5, Informative)
That's not what the story is about. We know the benefits of milk. We also know that Europeans drink milk and can digest it easily, whereas in other parts of the world milk drinking is rare and lactose intolerance is very common. The mystery here is that this discovery shows that the gene selection for milk drinking in adult europeans happened a lot more recently than it was assumed, and why it happened.
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Re:Not a mystery (Score:5, Interesting)
Weaning is probably the key point here. European humans likely never were weaned, and as a result, never lost their ability to digest lactose. You can maintain production of relevant enzymes in many animals by simply keeping giving them milk throughout their lives. It's how many cats do become lactose intolerant if you stop giving them milk after they are weaned from cat milk that comes from the mother, but there are a lot of cats who aren't in today's world. Because they get things like cow's milk, cream and so on. Essentially losing ability to digest lactose is an resource conservation process of digestive tract as a consequence of lack of need for the extra enzymes. If you keep drinking milk, you have a good chance of digestive tract never dropping its ability to produce relevant enzymes, because the need is constant.
And this trend of keeping getting milk would be a natural consequence of the specific kind of domesticated cattle that became prevalent in Europe once certain level of tribal warfare pacification, agricultural progress and cultural advancement was achieved in society.
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That's because neither genes nor "genetic relevance of long dead people" are of high relevance to the question being posed. There are two fairly common misunderstandings in the whole "genetics in people long since dead in relation to us" that are false:
Fist one is that genes are the sole variable in lactose intolerance. They are not. Cessation of production of relevant enzymes occurs both as a function of genetics and termination of enzyme generation due to lack of relevant environmental input. Remind yours
Re: Not a mystery (Score:2)
It doesnt work, like that. Weaning in animals occurs when drinking their mothers milk gives them stomach ache/bloating/diarrhoea so they stop. No reason humans should have been any different.
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You confuse cause and effect. Lactose intolerance in animals develops as a response to reduction of milk input. It's why many cats and dogs who are kept on milk based diet never stop producing relevant enzyme.
This is not to say that it won't occur on its own with time. In many animals, it does. But expression of generation of relevant enzymes is regulated at least in part by input of lactose into digestive tract.
Your misconception is fairly common though, and is one of the reasons why people give cats milk,
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Weaning in animals occurs when drinking their mothers milk gives them stomach ache/bloating/diarrhoea so they stop.
Nope. Parents wean the child.
The child will gladly keep on drinking in perpetuity.
Luckyo is in fact correct that lactose intolerance has 2 facets: genetic, and intestinal resource optimization.
All mammals are born lactose tolerant. Those without genes that cause lactase production to never stop will stop producing lactase once they cease drinking milk. Those with genes that cause lactase production to never stop will continue to produce lactase, even if they stop drinking milk.
Re: Not a mystery (Score:2)
So if someone stops eating starch for a few weeks amylase production stops and doesnt restart? Ditto protein and pepsin production? Didnt think so. Sounds like BS to me.
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First off, pepsin and amylase are proteins. All enzymes are. Your body wouldn't be able to construct them otherwise, so the statement "Ditto protein and pepsin production?" already outs you as having no idea what you're talking about. But let's not let that stop us from exploring your brilliant hypothesis.
"So if someone steps on a cow, it dies? Ditto an elephant and a giraffe? Didn't think so. Sounds like BS to me."
Yet if I step on a mouse, it's dead a
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Long ago, I read some evolutionary biology stuff about a phenomenon called "neotony". This is where adult animals continue to show childish traits and behaviours. In humans, one example is the continued capacity for play. In most mammals, childhood play is perhaps a kind of training for adult life, and may establish social bonds. But after that there is no need for it. In humans, there are many playful activities in adult life. I suppose my posting here is a form of play, because I am certainly not going to
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Actually most europeans have evolved genes that let them digest milk in adulthood.
Just barely. 60.1% of non-Finnish Europeans have an MCM6 variant that doesn't ever deactivate LCT (57% for the Fins)
The other 30% or so Europeans that have no trouble with milk simply have environmental lactose tolerance- they never ceased drinking milk in their life (Americans are the same way)
so there must be a big evolutionary advantage to drinking milk.
No, evolution doesn't work that way.
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No, evolution doesn't work that way.
So getting from almost nobody being able to drink milk to most of the population (yes, 60% means most) being able to drink it, in the span of a few thousand years somehow has nothing to do with evolution and drinking milk being evolutionary advantageous?
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So getting from almost nobody being able to drink milk to most of the population (yes, 60% means most) being able to drink it, in the span of a few thousand years somehow has nothing to do with evolution and drinking milk being evolutionary advantageous?
Who knows.
so there must be a big evolutionary advantage to drinking milk.
But that's still false.
There *could* be, for sure. There could just as easily *not* be.
I'll present the most obvious scenario:
All human populations that drink a lot of milk have higher rates of lactose tolerant MCM6 modifications.
Genes often lose function if they're no longer needed, and it can happen quite quickly.
MCM6 has evolved to stop production of lactase via LCT gene once it's no longer needed. To keep producing it in a non-milk drinking society would be a literal waste of body resour
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You missed the point of the article. They mystery is how come Lactase Persistence in Germany went from 0 to over 80% in 3000 years without it being a new population. Its not natural selection as there wasn't a crisis that caused non-milk drinkers to be less fertile.
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How sure are you about that?
Widespread starvation in the winter months was likely quite common in Northern Europe. Cows would be kept alive to calve in the spring time, so milk would have been available. Apart from fish (not often found inland when there is ice on the top of the rivers/lakes) what other sources of protein were there?
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Most starvation was in the late Spring/early Summer just before you could harvest wheat for bread. Remember, potatoes didn't come until the 1500s.
Cows that are calving in the spring stop giving milk in the Autumn.
So there are 2 factual problems with your theory.
Re: Not a mystery (Score:2, Interesting)
Milk has some major advantages. Besides being calorie dense, itâ(TM)s a good source of vitamin D especially in the winter. Combine that with the fact that potatoes and grains are low in vitamin D as well, itâ(TM)s likely that as humans transitioned to agriculture that preventing rickets was a major natural selection in favor of milk drinkers. Humans likely didnâ(TM)t even know that switching to grains was killing them and drinking milk was saving them but along with food scarcity, this cou
Re: Not a mystery (Score:5, Informative)
>"Milk has some major advantages. Besides being calorie dense, itÃ(TM)s a good source of vitamin D especially in the winter. "
Back then? No it wasn't. Natural milk is low in vitamin D.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
"If milk and dairy products are not fortified, they are normally low in vitamin D"
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old jungle saying (Score:2)
The Phantom drank milk, and he was stronger than 10 tigers...
Re: Not a mystery (Score:3)
Ideal in northern climates, where the growing season is limited and game is sparse.
The ability to store something like cheese over winter would have given people an enormous advantage. Butter and, I think cheese, making equipment has been found in Scotland from the Bronze Age. Could be wrong on cheese.
An alternative is fermented milk. Milk wine. I know of no evidence in Europe, but very little would have been preserved. Unlike stone items in a house, you're looking at wineskins attached to a horse.
(Must Far
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Overpopulation lead to widespread malnutrition
Malnourished babies of malnourished mothers would have benefited significantly from cows' milk. Possibly to the extent of whether families had several children living to breed, rather than none at all. The UK has been overpopulated since at least the 1700's, and also produces little or no food for about 1/2 the year. (Hence the need for imports we won't get after Brexit, and, tra
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In the 1950's yogurt and other milk products were staple food here in The Netherlands.
Yet cereal was to me unknown until around 1970, we had oats
Re: Not a mystery (Score:3)
And ghee lasts longer than either butter or cheese - decades if sealed in a jar.
Or a "super" DNA spreader (Score:2)
I wouldn't rule out a mutation in one of the highly prolific men of the ancient world, a Ghenghis Khan type. If you get a few hundred women pregnant over the course of your life, and a even couple of your sons follow in your footsteps, the mutation could spread rather rapidly.
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My money is on cow pox.
Probably saved a few milk drinkers from smallpox.
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If you are lactose tolerant and live in a society of lactose intolerant people, how will you use your genetic advantage? In such a society there will be no dairy products. You would have to accidentally drink milk even though you were told that this will make you sick, and find that it doesn't. Or come across some foreigner from a society of lactose tolerant people that tells you about the advantages of milk. Both will be very unlikely to happen.
Re: Or a "super" DNA spreader (Score:2)
We know the spread of lactose tolerance in Europe. Started in southwest central Eastern Europe, then spread West into Europe, then north.
So the initiating event is complicated to explain, but after that the information is easy enough to obtain.
The initial event causes two problems
First, as noted, there's nobody to say.
Secondly, it's far enough south that there should have been less pressure on food in winter. Having greater access to food shouldn't have offered much of a benefit.
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He literally said: "I wouldn't rule out a mutation in one of the highly prolific men of the ancient world, a Ghenghis Khan type."
Let's say your genetic fitness factor is
The Great Khan? Like 20.
Being The Great Khan means your genes have an advantage simply by volume.
Evolution doesn't favor quality. It favors quantity. Sometimes, those follow.
Maybe they just wanted to...? (Score:5, Funny)
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That's your only hope, right?
Find the atavistic avatar of a lond dead people?
We are X-Men (Score:2)
As mutant powers go, being able to drink milk isn't all that impressive but I'll take it.
Funnel-Beaker Culture (Score:3, Informative)
It's been known for a long time that lactose tolerance first appeared in a group called the Funnel-Beaker Culture in Northern Europe about 4000 years ago, and spread rapidly throughout Europe from there.
I guess these fellows didn't get the mutation.
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A quick check on the Funnel-Beaker culture shows that it is older than 4000 years old: 4300 to 2800 BCE, so that means some 6000 years old. This is still fairly young, in terms of human history and evolution.
There are peoples such as native Australians that can trace their history back tens of thousands of years. I would be interested to know the prevalence of lactose intolerance among those people. Maybe it has been bred out now.
What about India? This has to be one of the main milk-using cultures in the wo
Calcium (Score:2)
Calcium helps you grow bigger quicker via bone growth. Goat milk similarly helped Africans grow larger. I don't know if size offered a physical advantage or merely a social advantage, because larger people need more calories.
Milk is for cows (Score:5, Funny)
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOO! Mooooo cows MOOOOOOO! Mooo say the cows. You milk-drinking cows!
Any Starbucks-like ancient ruins? (Score:2)
Maybe the Romans had their equivalent of Starbucks, and they served milk based drinks. Fads can change population diets in less than a generation.
Please drink milk (Score:2)
Become a mammal.
My guess is... (Score:2)
...that's the reason they are dead.
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...that's the reason they are dead.
No, they would still be dead - irregardless of their lactose tolerance (or lack thereof).
Advertising (Score:2)
Composition Fallacy? (Score:2)
Is this entire premise based on a composition fallacy or is the actual paper not so stupid (as usual)?
Why do you think Indians worship the cow? (Score:2)
Once lactose tolerant gene mutation happens in a population, those who can digest milk in adulthood will quickly prosper
Re: Bafled? (Score:3)
But not most of Europe. That's the baffling part.
Re: Bafled? (Score:4, Interesting)
But not most of Europe. That's the baffling part.
I'm of European descent and as an adult I can drink milk, digest it, and benefit from it. If I go drink a gallon of it, I'm going to fart like a trombone, but cheese products don't cause the same problem. Probably, like many people who claim to be lactose intolerant, I have some issue with proteins, not the actual lactose. Probiotics seem to help this.
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... but cheese products don't cause the same problem. Probably, like many people who claim to be lactose intolerant, I have some issue with proteins, not the actual lactose.
This sounds like a mild form of lactose intolerance. Most people with lactose intolerance can consume one cup (250 ml) without much trouble and do that multiple times per day. There is hardly any lactose in cheese, but most proteins are still there.
About 80% of Turkish and Indian people are lactose intolerant. A few people I know from both countries were very surprised to learn this, given how much diary they consume (it's the "holy cow" in India because of the milk). Lactose intolerance supposedly starts
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The probiotics help because they contain lactase, which your body no longer produces an adequate amount of.
That's ok- it's normal.
40% of Europeans are not genetically lactose tolerant. People are simply confusing environmental lactose tolerance with genetic lactose tolerance.
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I have read that the fart-producing tendencies of pulses (beans) is partly due to the presence of indigestible complex sugars. These pass through the gut without the body breaking them down and using them, and end up in the lower intestine, where the bacteria have a good nosh, resulting in methane production. Proper cooking can break down these complex sugars, and so reduce the flatulence factor. I really do not like under-cooked beans.
Protein intolerance raises the subject of gluten intolerance. I have kno
Re: Bafled? (Score:2)
A cow is essentially an invention of gut bacteria to get from A to B.
Re:Well that explains it. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well that explains it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Uhhhhh, the dead people might have lost.
The graves contain the wussies who couldn't stomach milk, and were simply of inferior athletic capability.
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Re:Well that explains it. (Score:4, Interesting)
By 3000 years ago (1000 BCE) the Assyrians had been forging iron for two centuries and there were forges in Greece and Crimea.
Yet just a few hundred kilometers north, these armies were still fighting with bronze weapons.
I guess these guys didn't get the memo that the bronze age was over.
Re:Well that explains it. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well that explains it. (Score:5, Interesting)
And Tactius' Germania [richmond.edu], c. 20 BC:
Re:Well that explains it. (Score:5, Interesting)
_Curdled_) milk. Yogurt, perhaps? That would lower the percentage of lactose in the milk significantly.
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My wife is lactose intolerant and has no problem eating yogurt.
Re:Well that explains it. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, dear. Even a casual amount of Google research reveals that lactase, the enzyme humans use to digest lactose, is produced by human cells in the walls of the small intestine, not by intestinal flora. This kind of nonsensical "flushing of intestinal flora" is the kind of potentially lethal psudoscience that is conjured by fools without the slightest knowledge of medicine.
I'm not normally so harsh, but for someone who has other medical issues this knd of pseudoscientific treatment can be lethal.
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CURDLED milk, not fresh milk.
Damn short attention span.
Re:Well that explains it. (Score:4, Informative)
Genetic tests also indicate historic milk drinking genetically tolerated in CENTRAL Europe, not Northern
Milk drinking started around 7,500 years ago in central Europe [phys.org]
The ability to digest the milk sugar lactose first evolved in dairy farming communities in central Europe, not in more northern groups as was previously thought, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) scientists published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology.
The genetic change that enabled early Europeans to drink milk without getting sick has been mapped to dairying farmers who lived around 7,500 years ago in a region between the central Balkans and central Europe. Previously, it was thought that natural selection favoured milk drinkers only in more northern regions because of their greater need for vitamin D in their diet. People living in most parts of the world make vitamin D when sunlight hits the skin, but in northern latitudes there isn't enough sunlight to do this for most of the year.
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The ability to drink milk is thought to be a factor in the success of the Mongols. Logistically, milk is the next best thing to modern preserved rations, doubly so if your source of milk is also the primary component of your armament.