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From: "Lawrence Mayka" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Lactose tolerance evolved recently
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 13:40:20 -0600
In-Reply-To: <996426.21322.qm@web52103.mail.yahoo.com>


> [mailto:] On Behalf Of ellen Levy
> I would be very surprised if domestication of such
> animals occurred first in northeastern Europe and not
> in the Middle East. I assume the earliest dairying
> cultures relied on sheep and goats, not cattle.

Why would you assume that drinking the milk of sheep and goats came before
drinking mare's milk? A settled agricultural or pastoral society can afford
the time to produce cheese; a nomadic society on horseback cannot. A
society that has already domesticated horses for transport might quickly
realize that mare's milk provides a convenient continual source of both food
and drink while traveling. Indeed, a horseback-based society would have
more _need_ to drink milk, because in their travels they cannot rely on
finding anything else.

Or to put in another way: In a prehistoric horseback-based society, a man
who suddenly discovers he has the amazing ability to sustain himself on
mare's milk has a tremendous competitive advantage over everyone else. He
can travel farther, and into less hospitable areas, than his colleagues can,
seizing and holding territory that they cannot.

Dr. Alan Outram of the University of Exeter is investigating the prehistoric
correlation between the domestication of horses and the milking of mares in
Kazakhstan:

http://www.sogaer.ex.ac.uk/archaeology/research/rhorsemilk.shtml

Why do you assume that the drinking of animal milk must have been invented
in the Middle East?

> Regarding dairying in Europe, Joao Zilhao, an
> archaeologist I written about before to the list, has
> found evidence of domesticated sheep during the
> earliest Neolithization of Portugal around 6900 BC.

If the recently announced research results are confirmed by further studies,
it will then be clear that these Portuguese sheepherders were _not_ drinking
sheep's milk. I reiterate that the issue is not the domestication of
animals per se, nor even the production of dairy products in general, but
the drinking of milk in particular. We are discussing the phenomenal rise
in lactose tolerance in northern Europe, from apparently near-zero to 90% or
more, within a few thousand years or less.

> He also notes that the two major livestock species -
> sheep and goat - have no native, wild, conspecific
> forms in Central Europe and were introduced from
> southeast Europe and ultimately from southwest Asia.

Is he ignoring the mare?


The first point we need to remember is that if people living in a given
region today do not drink milk, it is nearly absurd to argue that their
ancient ancestors in that region did so, much less that their ancestors
invented the practice.

The second point is that in ancient times just as today, it is precisely the
nomadic peoples who _need_ to drink milk:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/June05/lactase.herding.ssl.html
---
A major challenge in interpreting the data, Sherman noted, was to resolve
the puzzle that about 13 lactose-tolerant populations live side-by-side with
lactose-intolerant populations in some parts of Africa and the Middle East.

"The most likely explanation is nomadism," Sherman concluded. All 13 of the
populations that can digest dairy yet live in areas that are primarily
lactose intolerant were historically migratory groups that moved seasonally,
Sherman said.
---


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