Because dairy farming was a productive human enterprise if population had the mutation. Kenneth Nordtvedt Haplogroup I Clade Modalities and Trees at: http://knordtvedt.home.bresnan.net -----Original Message----- From: Matthew Simonds Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2014 12:31 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [yDNAhgI] Another Ancient DNA Study: A Milk Mystery... For thousands and thousands of years, adults couldn't digest dairy products without an upset stomach and a trip to the bathroom. And then one day, poof! A few changes in our DNA gave about a third of the world's population – mostly Europeans — the ability to knock back cheese, pizza and chocolate ice cream without a care in the world. But why? Why did this ability to digest lactose suddenly crop up in our European ancestors about 10,000 years ago? That's been a big mystery for scientists… To start filling in those blanks, Sverrisdóttir and her team analyzed the DNA of bones from 5,000-year-old farmers found in northern Spain. None of the eight individuals had the genetic mutation giving them the ability to digest milk as adults. In contrast, a third of the population in Spain today is lactose tolerant. So in the span of just a few thousand years, that ability spread rapidly throughout the country. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/23/265224739/a-milk-mystery-did-gloomy-weather-make-us-love-the-stuff ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message