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"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 i
by forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
"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).
- coldarchon 13y agoActually it is pretty well proven that milk was mainly used as dietary supplement for calcium and potassium, not vitamin D. Vegetables in northern Europe had thinner leaves because of frosty winters (we are speaking of a pre-domestication age) so the ice crystals inside of the leaves wouldn't destroy the plant. But humans get calcium and potassium mainly from thick leaves of vegetables. And that's why milk as food spread out so fast in densely habitable parts of Europe, while in sparsely populated areas there was enough meat.
- petemc_ 13y agoSo the rain in Spain doesn't stay mainly in the plain?
- narag 13y agoThere are places in Spain where it rains more than in the north, but only in a very small period of the year. Last time I looked, Cádiz (in the very south of the peninsula) is the province with more yearly rain, also one of the sunniest. That's because it's in the straigth between Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The (not very high, just about 1km height) mountains capture a lot of humidity. And no, it's not a matter of "a small period of the year", but of a small portion of the province: Sierra of Grazalema. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grazalema http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grazalema