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The obvious answer is that drinking milk gave people a new source of nutrients, reducing the risk of starvation. But on closer inspection this doesn’t hold up. “There’s a lot of different ...
Jul 28, 2022 · Archaeology. 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. Now researchers think they know ...
- Ewen Callaway
Dec 14, 2016 · Published: December 14, 2016 11:36am EST. A lot of people will have already made up their mind about whether humans need dairy in their diet and will be thinking that the answer is obviously ...
The small intestine produces lactase — it breaks down lactose into glucose and galactose, which can then be easily absorbed into the bloodstream. But for reasons unknown, the lactase gene tends to shut off about the time we're weaned from breast milk. Most people don't create any lactase (or very little of it) by the time they're 5 years old ...
- 6 min
Jan 27, 2021 · That's before humans evolved the "milk gene," suggesting we were drinking the liquid before we had the genetic tools to properly digest it. All humans can digest milk in infancy. But the ability to do so as an adult developed fairly recently, likely in the past 6000 years. A handful of mutations allows adults to produce the enzyme lactase ...
One idea has to do with famines and liquid milk. Thousands of years ago, millennia before refrigeration , animal milk would quickly turn to yogurt in warm climates, allowing lactose-intolerant humans to eat a nutritious and calorie-rich food (bacteria break down the lactose in yogurt, so even lactose-intolerant people can usually enjoy it).
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Jul 27, 2022 · This suggests that, for most lactose-intolerant people, the costs of drinking milk aren’t that high today, Thomas says — and probably weren’t in ancient times, either. “If you’re healthy ...
