Considering how obsessed we are with giving milk to kids because it’s so healthy, it doesn’t seem that crazy it would be a massive advantage to be able to drink it.
Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
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Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
#22Considering how obsessed we are with giving milk to kids because it’s so healthy, it doesn’t seem that crazy it would be a massive advantage to be able to drink it.
I'm somewhere between 100 and 100% sure that perception was manufactured by dairy industry marketing.
It was a classic bernays strategy, create the perception that everyone is doing it than everyone will do it. The same strategy used to get people to both start and stop smoking 60 years later
Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
#23It doesn't really surprise me much that lactase persistence should be so strongly selected for in a relatively short period of time. Cows and other ungulates possess a rather magical ability to turn something that can't be digested by humans (cellulose) into something that can (milk). Opening up the huge caloric and nutrient resource of cellulose to humans in a relatively replenishable way had to be a giant benefit t…
If it's so powerful, why did it not take over the rest of the world, or at least the rest of Eurasia? You'd think just a few people having kids with foreign populations would make the gene conquer the whole planet? They had cows in other places as well, right? One guess might be that winters in Europe were harsher than other population centres (China, India, Middle East), and periodic famines meant that some people w…
>If it's so powerful, why did it not take over the rest of the world, or at least the rest of Eurasia? You'd think just a few people having kids with foreign populations would make the gene conquer the whole planet? They had cows in other places as well, right?
It's cooler in Europe. Food stays better longer there. For example the daily mean temperature in Prague in July is 20 C, with a low of 15 C, so you could easily keep a cellar below that. Cheese will keep for a while. Plus, there's often a nearby mountain range with a convenient glacier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade#Pre-19th_century_met...
Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lactase persistence isn't the only (or even first) way to convert inedible flora into food. For one, you can simply eat the cows, the way it was done for most of human history. If you absolutely insist on dairy though, the genes for lactase persistence post-date dairying by a few millennia and many people who rely primarily on dairy today still lack the genes, like most Mongolians. They've adapted different productio…
Milk is vastly more efficient than directly eating cows. It’s the same reason eggs are cheaper than eating chickens, compounded by an even longer lifespan.
The comparison isn't between milk and not-milk. As I mentioned previously, you can eat dairy without lactase persistence.
Secondly, lactation is a pretty different energy calculus from eggs. The calories in it can be used to grow the baby animal it's intended for. That would still be less efficient than direct consumption, but probably not as substantially with ancient animals.
Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe school should mostly be help with what is currently deemed “homework” and homework should consist of watching lectures, interesting videos, etc. from the incredible plethora of existing content that is superb. No individual teacher could ever create lessons as good as those (plus it’s exhausting). Teaching is backwards and hasn’t evolved in 100 years!
Yes, the educational system is about two standard deviations worse than a private tutor. There's a name for this effect, but I don't remember it. As someone who was homeschooled, I'll do that for my children as well, and I hope I will be able to afford a tutor to assist with that. I've had no difficulty in life competing with people who went through the public school system, and I want my kids to have the same advant…
I didn't get the best education in public school - though I made up for it in college - but I did grow up with friends in vastly-different socioeconomic status than my own.
There's a tragedy of the commons here: parents who can afford private schools and tutors for their kids set them up for more success, but it also saps funding for public schools and families that can't afford that. (Public education would be better funded and higher quality if rich families had a reason to care.) Basically, white flight, though more tilted towards class now than race.
I want to send my kids to public school, but I know my individual actions wouldn't do much to fix the inequality.
Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
#26[deleted]
Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the educational system is about two standard deviations worse than a private tutor. There's a name for this effect, but I don't remember it. As someone who was homeschooled, I'll do that for my children as well, and I hope I will be able to afford a tutor to assist with that. I've had no difficulty in life competing with people who went through the public school system, and I want my kids to have the same advant…
It seems your school really sucked, and not just with regards to learning as most schools seem to do. For many people, though, school is also a source of lifelong friendships, romance, and other good things.
I’m sure my experience with school is not unique.
School was a prison, quite literally a mandatory daycare service which as a side project may have taught some kids.
But really, I’m 30 now. I look back in awe that we subject our kids to this. The friendships you forge would happen without being in prison.
Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
#28Considering how obsessed we are with giving milk to kids because it’s so healthy, it doesn’t seem that crazy it would be a massive advantage to be able to drink it.
I'm somewhere between 100 and 100% sure that perception was manufactured by dairy industry marketing. It was a classic bernays strategy, create the perception that everyone is doing it than everyone will do it. The same strategy used to get people to both start and stop smoking 60 years later
...and why we give diamond rings as an engagement token.
Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
#29By the time Germans became familiar to the Romans milk consumption was common. The common source of dietary fats for Romans at the time was olive oil. The common source of fats for the Germans was butter which the Romans looked down upon as barbaric.
Re: Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lactase persistence isn't the only (or even first) way to convert inedible flora into food. For one, you can simply eat the cows, the way it was done for most of human history. If you absolutely insist on dairy though, the genes for lactase persistence post-date dairying by a few millennia and many people who rely primarily on dairy today still lack the genes, like most Mongolians. They've adapted different productio…
> For one, you can simply eat the cows It could be more resource intensive to get a new cow each time rather than milk the same cow over and over for a longer period of time.
Milk production is also a continuum of data samples over the life of the animal. Eating the animal is one data sample and you can’t duplicate the animal after collecting the data.
Selecting for milk production would be a lot more accurate than selecting for meat tastiness, longevity or even, to an lesser extent, health.