Landmark study is the first major effort to quantify how lactose tolerance developed.
The dawn of dairy farming in Europe occurred thousands of years before most people evolved the ability to drink milk as adults without becoming ill.
But Richard Evershed, a biogeochemist at the University of Bristol, UK, who co-led the latest study, and his team have found milk fat residues on ancient potsherds dating from the dawn of animal domestication. Ancient genomics studies, meanwhile, showed that these early animal farmers were lactose intolerant, and that tolerance for milk did not become common in Europe until after the Bronze Age 4,000–5,000 years ago.
The team found little overlap between leaps in lactose tolerance and heightened milk consumption, inferred by the presence of milk-fat residues from some 13,000 potsherds from more than 550 archaeological sites across Europe. “All previous hypotheses for what was the natural selection advantage of lactase persistence pegged themselves to the extent of milk use,” says Thomas, because of the presumed nutritional benefits of being able to consume milk without getting sick.
But the researchers propose that the consequences of milk drinking among lactose-intolerant people long ago would have been much more severe for those who were in ill health, as a result of famine or infection. Fluid loss, through diarrhoea, contributes to deaths through malnutrition and infection, especially in places with poor sanitation.
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