Milk – It Does A Body Poor, Actually (ca. 5800 BC)
According to recent studies, it appears that people in the Stone Age didn’t drink milk – at all. Although modern Europeans rely on milk as a part of their diet, ancient Europeans were only able to digest milk up until the end of childhood – after which their bodies simply weren’t able to process the lactose through their systems.
DNA analysis of Neolithic skeletons showed that there might be a reason why today’s Europeans have the highest percentage of lactose tolerance in the world, more precisely in Europeans from north and central regions. It turns out that before dairy farming, humans had no need to be able to digest milk during adulthood, and it was only after dairy animals were introduced in Europe around 8000 years ago that humans began to be able to drink milk without getting sick.
The truth is, most mammals lose the ability to produce lactase after childhood, an enzyme in the intestines that is needed to digest lactose – it turns out that humans who still produce lactase actually have genetic mutation that allows them to do so. Essentially, Neolithic humans were normal in their lactose intolerance – and most European and African humans are the weird ones with a genetic mutation that allows them to keep drinking milk.
Today, the only modern humans that can properly digest milk are those from European, African, and Middle Eastern descent – wherever prehistoric farming communities began to use dairy animals like cows, goats, and sheep in their farm habits. The mutation developed as milk began to be a regular staple in the diet, providing nutrients when other harvests were small, leaving the rest of the world behind in their ‘normalcy’.
So, although you may enjoy your ice cream today, if you’re ever given the opportunity to travel back in time to the Stone Age, leave the Yoplait behind – unless you really want to make your prehistoric ancestors ill.
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