
Archaeology: The milk revolution - yread
http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471
======
nkoren
Fascinating true(?) story about how lactose intolerance changed the course of
history, as recorded in the ancient sagas[1]:

When the Vikings established their colony in Vinland, they wished to establish
peaceable relations with the Native Americans. They invited the local chiefs
to a party at their longhouse, in which they served an amazing new drink --
milk -- which the Americans had never seen before. The following morning,
suffering from intense abdominal pains, the natives accused the vikings of
trying to poison them, and promptly laid siege to the colony until the Vikings
packed up and buggered off.

But for this incident, it's entirely possible that the Vikings might have
established a durable colony in the Americas, leading to contact between the
old and new world 500 years earlier.

1:
[http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Places/District/1009811](http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Places/District/1009811)

~~~
BlobbleBlab
Fascinating, but it doesn't stand up to a few minutes of googling:

[http://www.editors-wastebasket.org/nexx/pro/vinland.html](http://www.editors-
wastebasket.org/nexx/pro/vinland.html)

"What drove the two groups apart was a killing. Some of the Norse men killed a
skraeling who was attempting to steal weapons, which Thorfinn had forbidden as
trade items."

The Skraelings, being mammals, and observers of other mammals such animals
they hunted, would have been familiar with milk, even without owning
livestock.

If they bought raw milk, they probably intended to use it for their children,
but it seems a rather difficult trade item, as a liquid, and having a shelf
life of only a day or two.

They probably were trading butter or cheese, neither of which contains enough
lactose to cause problems. Fresh cheese would have been known from the
stomachs of suckling animals, and might have been a prized delicacy before
they were aware it could be manufactured. Butter would have been completely
new to them.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _They probably were trading butter or cheese, neither of which contains
> enough lactose to cause problems._

I am lactose tolerant; I can assure you that cheese contains enough lactose to
cause problems.

------
chime
The map of Lactase Hotspots is pretty interesting. My family comes from the
State of Gujarat in India, one of the darker (70%+) regions in the map. The
"White Revolution"[1] was started in the 70s by independent dairy farmers in
the district our village belongs to. The Gujarati and neighboring Rajasthani
diet has always included milk and byproducts as a significant ingredient. The
3m+ milk producers supplying milk to the dairy cooperative Amul [2] have made
India the largest producer of milk and milk products in the world. I highly
doubt this would've happened if the region was 30%-40% dark like the rest of
India.

Similar to how presidential elections are impacted by a 100 million year old
coastline [3], this small genetic mutation has affected the entire world's
economy, especially agriculture-based industries. Once we enter the post-
natural-selection era where we can select the DNA of our offspring, I wonder
how different will the long-term future be.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Revolution_(India)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Revolution_\(India\))

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul)

[3] [http://deepseanews.com/2012/06/how-presidential-elections-
ar...](http://deepseanews.com/2012/06/how-presidential-elections-are-impacted-
by-a-100-million-year-old-coastline/)

------
forgottenpaswrd
"But lactase persistence also took root in sunny Spain, casting vitamin D's
role into doubt."

Well, Spain is not entirely sunny. Certainly the north of Spain is not. You
can see a darker line in the map that divides Spain. This is divided by a set
of mountains called "Cordillera cantábrica" that makes the north way more
rainy than the rest of Spain.

There are places in Spain where it rains more than in the north, but only in a
very small period of the year. Most of the year is sunny there(the part that
is not the north).

~~~
petemc_
So the rain in Spain doesn't stay mainly in the plain?

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contingencies
There's some pretty vicious comments on that article!

Personally I am mostly interested in Asian history. We know that South Asian
and Tibeto-Burman people have been milk and cheese consumers for a long time,
as have the Central Asian peoples including the Mongols, who are said to have
actually preferred liquid foods to solid ones.

These days, I know first hand that a lot of people in China are getting stuck
in to milk products for the first time. How can this be, if they should keel
over in pain and indigestive flatulence? The only person I've ever seen mass-
produce cheese in an apartment was a Burmese friend in China, who I'm sure
wasn't after the lactose for its apparent usefulness in diluting heroin!
Wikipedia states: _Some studies indicate that environmental factors—more
specifically, the consumption of lactose—may "play a more important role than
genetic factors in the etio-pathogenesis of milk intolerance"_ ... ie. the
intolerance notion is largely bullshit and people can adapt to lactose. That
seems to fit the observations.

Anyway, interesting to ponder... I went and polished off a block of New
Zealand cheddar to celebrate. (Saving Roquefort for a salad tomorrow, then
it's off to Indonesia where cheese is no doubt harder to find!)

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VLM
Just last night I was reading "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-
Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World" by David Anthony
and I was around the part of the book describing the lactose mutation and its
spread across the world etc. Pre-historic time is pretty complicated, and
interesting.

Its a fairly academic book oriented more toward the spread of proto-indo-
european language and related topics. And I got the pointer to that book from
a podcast delivered lecture series "WS3710 History of Iran to the Safavid
Period" a tolerable recording (tolerable from a technical standpoint; OK to
listen to, but not going to win any awards for audio engineering). Its a
recording of a class at Columbia from 2008.

My interpretation of the book and lecture series is people kept livestock for
quite a long time before some mutant gained the ability to drink milk, which
given the herd of meat animals meant they gained a lot of nutrition compared
to the non-mutants, which is a huge survival gain.

I've found I enjoy university lectures much more now that I don't need to take
midterms and write papers, so thats pretty much all I listen to.

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jdmitch
The article ignored the emergence of lactase persistence in West Africa and
Saudi Arabia (where two other hotspots on the map are) but there is more on
that in this study:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672153/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672153/)

------
petercooper
I became lactose intolerant at the age of 30 with all the described
accompanying 'issues'. It took 6 months to work it out though as it was so
sudden and I'd consumed milk frequently up until then. Curiously, though, both
of my daughters are lactose intolerant, so it seems something weird gene-wise
was going on there..

~~~
hollerith
The cause is much more likely changes in the microflora of your gut than your
genes. (The human-lactase persistence allele is only one tiny part of the
total picture.)

Lactose sometimes feeds bad microbes (because the microbes can use the di-
saccharide bond for energy or because the the di-saccharide bond delays the
absorption of the sugar, allowing it to feed bacteria residing in parts of the
gut where starches and simple sugars are absent because they've already been
absorbed upstream.)

In addition, microbes can produce toxins that interfere with the production or
the effectiveness of the enzymes that cleave the di-saccharide bond.

The practical application of what I just said is that you might be able to
regain your lactose tolerance by scrupulously avoiding lactose for a few
months or a few years (i.e., long enough to starve out the offending microbial
species). A good pro-biotic supplement might help.

------
bausson
I think I've already seen that link around here. Still a very good read for
those who didn't.

I love how this little plus provide in the long run an overwhelming advantage.

~~~
m_mueller
You can simulate this -sort of- by playing Age of Empires. In this game, the
civilizations are pretty much the same, except for small bonuses here and
there - yet their play style often differs a lot, as in the successful
strategies are wildly different.

Small bonuses can mean a lot in a game of life.

------
samuel
Project LeChe, great name!! Leche is the spanish word for milk.

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DiabloD3
As a reminder, milk isn't paleo.

~~~
joemaller1
If you've got an LP allele, neither are you.

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amalag
What load of bullshit. It does not even mention pasteurization. As most of the
uninformed comments on this page as well. As a comment rightly notes:

Raw milk contains lactase producing bacteria, so anyone consuming milk in its
raw form would be able to digest it without any digestion problems. Only
pasteurized milk is lactase free as heating destroys the bacteria that produce
the enzyme. Most milk historically would have been consumed raw so an
adaptation to produce lactase would have been unnecessary and would not
provide a significant competitive advantage.

~~~
derleth
It's amazing how quickly that claim falls to basic research:
[http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/BuyStor...](http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/BuyStoreServeSafeFood/ucm247991.htm)

> Probiotic microorganisms must be of human origin in order to have an impact
> on human health (Teitelbaum and Walker, 2000). Bacteria present in raw milk
> are from infected udder tissues (e.g., mastitis causing bacteria), the dairy
> environment (e.g., soil, water, and cow manure), and milking equipment. High
> bacteria counts in raw milk only indicate poor animal health and poor farm
> hygiene.

> Bacteria in raw milk are typically not of human origin. An exception is
> Streptococcus pyogenes. S. pyogenes that has adapted to humans can be
> transmitted to animals. Once S. pyogenes is colonized in animals, it can be
> re-transmitted to humans as a human pathogen that causes strep throat. For
> example, S. pyogenes can infect a cow udder to cause mastitis. The infected
> cow udder can subsequently shed S. pyogenes, a pathogen, into raw milk.

This is one reason many people are wary of 'raw milk': People lie to promote
it. They tell bald-faced lies, and they expect people won't check up on them.
And then they spin conspiracy theories when someone _does_ check up on them
and call them on their lies. It's just cynical advertising from an industry
that uses fear to sell its wares.

~~~
VLM
His claim is basically true that (pure, uninfected) raw milk is better for you
than regular milk. Good luck being able to buy pure uninfected raw milk. I
suppose its the hand of Darwin striking down the gullible, and/or the children
of the gullible. His lie is more by omission in that its a fairly idiotic way
to obtain nutrition. If you must drink something unhealthy try corn syrup
soda, or fruit juice, might make you unhealthy in the long run but at least
probably not infected.

The best comparison is by analogy in that a raw bratwurst will provide you
with a tiny delta better nutrition than a cooked bratwurst. There seems to be
no way to successfully argue it isn't better. Although you'd have to be some
kind of idiot to eat a raw bratwurst other than some kind of MTV "jackass" tv
show stunt to see just how badly you can food poison yourself and still
survive.

~~~
wdewind
> The best comparison is by analogy in that a raw bratwurst will provide you
> with a tiny delta better nutrition than a cooked bratwurst.

I don't think this is strictly true, it's more complicated than that. You
increase the bioavailability of many of the nutrients (especially proteins) by
cooking, but lose some of the vitamins which are heat sensitive.

~~~
VLM
OK fair point. Probably the right way to do it (which would result in
arguments...) would be to create a numerical metric of "goodness" based on a
huge number of known macro and micro nutrients found in brats.

I was thinking in my numerical function that total caloric intake is going to
be reduced by rendering out fat in the cooking process so it would be a net
loss. I was inspired to google and pork is a reasonably good source of vitamin
B-6 would have to research its heat stability which I'm not quite motivated
enough to do. Also I'm unclear if my google source is talking about B-6 pre or
post cooking. It may be there's too much pre cooking (probably not, but maybe)

~~~
wdewind
Haha your reply made me smile :) That would be a really interesting thing to
do. It would be cool to have an optimum cooking range for different
nutritional benefits. I wonder what nutritional values, outside of fat of
course, our tastes are most calibrated for.

