Got Lactase?
Randall Stephens In a recent issue of Nature , Andrew Curry offers up the latest theories on milk and civilization in the West. How and why did ancient herders supplement their diets with cheese roughly 6,800 to 7,400 years ago? Who were these early cheese makers? What were the results of the new cheese diet and the later reliance on milk? Says Curry: farming started to replace hunting and gathering in the Middle East around 11,000 years ago, cattle herders learned how to reduce lactose in dairy products to tolerable levels by fermenting milk to make cheese or yogurt. Several thousand years later, a genetic mutation spread through Europe that gave people the ability to produce lactase — and drink milk — throughout their lives. That adaptation opened up a rich new source of nutrition that could have sustained communities when harvests failed. Curry also notes that: This two-step milk revolution may have been a prime factor in allowing bands of farmers and herders from the sou...