A new study combines large archaeological data sets on dairy farming with ancient DNA and finds that across Europe, people consumed dairy for millennia before lactase persistence into adulthood was widespread.
Over the past 10,000 years, populations living far apart in Europe, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East separately acquired a key genetic change: the ability to digest the milk sugar lactose as adults. Researchers thought people who had that ability and lived in dairy farming cultures got a nutritional boost and had more children, thus spreading the genetic changes.
The study “changes our long-term understanding of the relationship between milk use and lactase persistence,” says Jessica Hendy, an archaeologist at the University of York who was not involved in the work. Fluctuating dairy use over time didn’t match up with changes in lactase persistence. Instead, the researchers found that what they considered signals of famine and sickness bestLactose intolerance in dairying cultures might be dangerous for people who were sick or starving, suggests co-author Mark Thomas, a human evolutionary geneticist at University College London.
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