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From: "Ted Stout" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Lactose tolerance evolved recently
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:31:04 -1000
References: <380-220073412422722@earthlink.net>


Lactose intolerance hit me at the age of 11. I loved milk, "natures most
perfect food they used to say" so it took me a while to find out what was
causing such pain. It was even more of a surprise since no one else in my
family seemed to have it. It seems to not always hit me when I drink all
milk products. There may be something about the way it is prepared.
Straight, whole milk is the worst. What I wonder is how it is passed on
since it seems to have not hit everyone in my family. I had thought it
might be something I got from Cherokee ancestry.

Ted
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Olson" <>
To: <>; <>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 4:42 PM
Subject: Re: [DNA] Lactose tolerance evolved recently


> Apparently all mammals are born lactose tolerant. Lactose intolerance in
> a
> newborn breast-feeding infant would be fatal, whether cat, dog, human or
> horse, etc. What we are discussing is therefore loss of lactose tolerance
> upon maturity => or not. We recently had an account of a nutritious
> Ukrainian drink known as kumis.
>
>>From Wikipedia:
>
> "Kumis (also transliterated kumiss, koumiss, kymys, kymyz; called airag or
> chigee in Mongolian cuisine) is a fermented drink traditionally made from
> the milk of horses. It remains important to the people of the Central
> Asian
> steppes, including the Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, Mongols, and Yakuts.[1]
> The word kumis is thought to derive from the name of the Turkic Kumyks
> people.[2] The capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, is named after the paddle
> used to churn the fermenting milk, showing the importance of the drink in
> the national culture."
>
> Horse yogurt...a staple of Central Asian nomads.....
>
> Is there any evidence that lactose tolerance/intolerance is related to an
> SNP defined Haplogroup? I think I doubt it...
>
> Eric Olson
>
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Lawrence Mayka <>
>> To: <>
>> Date: 2/28/2007 6:03:48 PM
>> Subject: Re: [DNA] Lactose tolerance evolved recently
>>
>> The press release glosses over the genetic replacement that was required
> to
>> accomplish this. In other words, the only way lactose tolerance can go
> from
>> near-zero to 90% in a population so quickly is through the progressive
>> near-extinction of lactose-intolerant people relative to those who are
>> lactose-tolerant.
>>
>> The European tribe in which lactose tolerance first appeared presumably
> had
>> a predominance of some yDNA haplogroup(s) over others. That tribe's
> growth,
>> and the simultaneous attrition of the lactose-intolerant tribes, may have
>> caused a significant shift in haplogroup proportions across northern
> Europe.
>>
>> One could try to claim that the growth of lactose tolerance was primarily
>> female-mediated, and hence did not alter yDNA haplogroup proportions
>> significantly. But that doesn't make much sense: If you belong to a
> tribe
>> of fortunate milk-drinkers, are you really going to trade away your
> valuable
>> milk-drinking womenfolk in exchange for another tribe's women who cannot
>> consume your tribe's staple food? Would you not instead hoard your
> magical
>> milk-drinking superpower for your own tribe, in the hope of outcompeting
> the
>> other?
>>
>> Of course, the lactose-intolerant tribe could attack the milk drinkers,
> kill
>> their men, and marry their women, but that very real possibility is
>> politically incorrect nowadays, so I won't mention it here. ;)
>>
>> > [mailto:] On Behalf Of Jim T
>> > "the gene that controls our ability to digest milk was
>> > missing from Neolithic skeletons dating to between 5840 and
>> > 5000 BC. However, through exposure to milk, lactose tolerance
>> > evolved extremely rapidly, in evolutionary terms. Today, it
>> > is present in over ninety per cent of the population of
>> > northern Europe and is also found in some African and Middle
>> > Eastern populations but is missing from the majority of the
>> > adult population globally."
>>
>>
>>
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