3 ms·
Do you know why we drink milk after infancy? Because we evolved to. It was when man domesticated the Auroch (the predecessor to the cow) that it is thought th
by ironchef 12y ago
Do you know why we drink milk after infancy? Because we evolved to. It was when man domesticated the Auroch (the predecessor to the cow) that it is thought they started holding on to lactase production farther into life. Milk allowed the humans to live better and fatter when times were lean. As such, there was an evolution towards continue lactase production. There's some really interesting work in this area done by McCracken out of UCLA. There's also some cool studies since then around the cultural migrations of lactase and lactose intolerance by Enattah and Tishkoff.
Pretty neat stuff seeing how evolution affects all of us.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> Do you know why we drink milk after infancy? Because we evolved to. "We" in this case being, essentially, Northern Europeans. Lactase persistence isn't really the global norm.
- ironchef 12y ago"We" in this case is actually those human cultures with large backgrounds in herding. For example the Maasai, Kenyans, Tanzanians, and Sudanese tend to not be lactose intolerant. I think we'd agree they're not Northern Europeans. That being said, yes it's not a global norm.
- scw 12y agoIt is more widespread than you might think. This article tells the story of the potential role of milk in the growth of the agrarian way of life: http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471 http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1...