Drinking milk ‘made ancient humans bigger and stronger’
Children are often urged by their parents to be good mothers and fathers. However, drinking milk may have made some ancient people taller or heavier.
Researchers looked at skeletons taken from archaeological sites that span over 25,000-years and found evidence of milk. This led to an increase between 7,000 and 2,000 years in size.
Researchers believe that the area where people are most active was where the size increase occurred. .
In some areas, ancient humans had higher levels of genes that allow the production of enzymes that digest milk into adulthood – called lactase persistence.
Dr Eoin Parkinson, from Archaeology and Palaeoecology at the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen’s University, said: “Through this study we’ve found that drinking milk led to increased skeletal growth and taller populations in some parts of the world.
“Everyone probably has memories from their childhood of being told to drink up their milk to help them grow.
“We can almost think of this in the context of our own evolutionary story and we see trends in dairy consumption going back as far as 7,000 years ago having an impact on how people process dairy products today.”
“Drinking milk and the consumption of dairy products is a vital component in food culture in many parts of the world, so it is interesting to understand the underlying biological processes related to these practices.
“Agriculture emerged in the Near East before farming groups migrated into Europe, bringing a host of new domesticated plants and dairy-producing animals with them.
“In some parts of northern and central Europe, where local environments were not suited to the newly imported south-west Asian crops, human societies responded through increased consumption of milk.”
A 16-member team of researchers conducted the study and compared the stature of 3,507 skeletons taken from 366 archaeological sites.
This data set was used to analyze human body variation over time, and across geographic locations.
Because of the historical more frequent archaeological explorations on the continent, the majority of the data used in the study were European samples.
Farmers developed independently in different areas and migrated with crops and dairy animals to Eurasia, which was occupied by hunter/gatherers.
The ability to absorb higher amounts of lactose has led to increased energy availability from dairy products.
Today, lactose intolerance is still a common symptom of ancient milk consumption.
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