Milk Drinking Started 7,500 years Ago In Central Europe

The one gene among approximately 2,000 that appear to have evolved uniquely in humans within the last 40,000 years about which there is no argument is that for lactase. A mutation arose some 7,500 years ago which allowed human groups carrying it to persist with lactose digestion in milk and milk products beyond childhood. Until recently it was held that the source of this mutation, and its early spread, occurred in northern European latitudes because of a need to bolster calcium to aid vitamin D synthesis. This is where the mutation exists at highest frequency today. However, Mark Thomas and colleagues, from UC London, using computational techniques, have placed the origin of the mutation somewhere between the central Balkans and central Europe, probably among the so-called Linearbandkeramik culture. Dairy farmers carrying this gene variant, they say, underwent more widespread and rapid population growth than non-dairying groups and this spread of fresh milk drinking from the Balkans across Europe explains why most European lactase-persistent people carry the same version of the gene - it surfed on a wave of population expansion that followed the rapid co-evolution of milk tolerance and dairy farming.