China News Service, Beijing, July 28 (Reporter Sun Zifa) Do human beings drink milk first or have lactase that can digest lactose first?

A newly published archaeological paper in the internationally renowned academic journal "Nature" points out that European prehistoric people may have started drinking milk from domestic animals thousands of years before the evolution of genes that can digest lactose.

The findings provide new insights into human milk drinking behavior and the evolution of lactose tolerance genes.

  According to the paper, researchers have long believed that the milk-drinking behavior of ancient humans played an important role in the evolution of adults to produce lactase, which helps the body digest the lactose in milk.

However, there is still considerable uncertainty on this question, as the extent of milk-drinking behavior exhibits large geographic and temporal differences.

  To further study the co-evolution of dairy farming and lactose tolerance, the first author and co-corresponding author of the paper, Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol, UK, and his colleagues and peers, analyzed data from 554 The 6,899 animal fat residues extracted from 13,181 pottery fragments at the archaeological site constructed a complete map of milk-drinking behavior among prehistoric populations.

The evidence shows that milk drinking in Europe became common from the Neolithic period (starting around 7000 BC), but the extent varies by region and period.

  Based on published ancient DNA data from 1,786 prehistoric European and Asian individuals, they analyzed the frequency of major lactase gene variants in Eurasian populations over time.

The results show that the gene/trait of lactose tolerance did not become common in the human population until around 1000 BC, but in fact, studies such as existing fossils show that the earliest detection of lactose tolerance gene was in 4700-4600 BC. In ancient hominins of 2000, it took at least nearly 4000 years between when the gene/trait for lactose tolerance first appeared and actually became widespread in the human population.

  The authors of the paper believe that their latest findings show that milk-drinking behavior was already common in most European prehistoric populations where lactose intolerance was still present, raising the question of whether milk-drinking behavior is a part of lactose intolerance. The main driver?

However, modeling of genetic and archaeological data also did not find a strong association between milk drinking and the development of lactose tolerance.

Instead, their study found that indicators of famine and pathogen exposure better explain the evolution of lactose tolerance.

  International peer experts published a "News and Views" article saying that the results of the study challenge the mainstream views on the evolution of lactose tolerance genes and provide new ideas for further research on other possible hypotheses.

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