Stone Age Scandinavians unable to digest milk - a research suggests

[DAVIDE]

This is very interesting for me, that i cant digest milk too

The hunter-gatherers who inhabited the southern coast of Scandinavia 4,000 years ago were lactose intolerant. This has been shown by a new study carried out by researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University. The study, which has been published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, supports the researchers' earlier conclusion that today's Scandinavians are not descended from the Stone Age people in question but from a group that arrived later.
"This group of hunter-gatherers differed significantly from modern Swedes in terms of the DNA sequence that we generally associate with a capacity to digest lactose into adulthood," says Anna Linderholm, formerly of the Archaeological Research Laboratory, Stockholm University, presently at University College Cork, Ireland.
According to the researchers, two possible explanations exist for the DNA differences.
"One possibility is that these differences are evidence of a powerful selection process, through which the Stone Age hunter-gatherers' genes were lost due to some significant advantage associated with the capacity to digest milk," says Anna Linderholm. "The other possibility is that we simply are not descended from this group of Stone Age people."
The capacity to consume unprocessed milk into adulthood is regarded as having been of great significance for human prehistory.
"This capacity is closely associated with the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies," says Anders Götherström of the Department of Evolutionary Biology at Uppsala University.
He serves as coordinator of LeCHE (Lactase persistence and the early Cultural History of Europe), an EU-funded research project focusing on the significance of milk for European prehistory.
"In the present case, we are inclined to believe that the findings are indicative of what we call "gene flow," in other words, migration to the region at some later time of some new group of people, with whom we are genetically similar," he says. "This accords with the results of previous studies."
The researchers' current work involves investigating the genetic makeup of the earliest agriculturalists in Scandinavia, with an eye to potential answers to questions about our ancestors.




Source:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-sas040110.php

[athanaric]

I think it's most likely that these people mixed with some other ancestors of the modern Swedes (that is, some kind of Indo-Europeans) and the DNA sequence in question got lost or "overwritten" in the process.

[DAVIDE]

i thought the same thing. Something went wrong on Dna sequence


more coverage:

For Stone Age Scandinavians, milk was 'too hard to swallow

Stone Age Scandinavians unable to digest milk, study shows

http://www.sciencenewsdaily.org/arch...uster41271130/

[abbews]

There are quite some lactos intolerants in Sweden today, altough many are that by fashion. But that all where back then?

[theStig]

I'm very sceptical about the article, not just because of the wrong dating used by the journalist (it's 4000 BC not 4000 BP, 4000 years ago is like early Bronze Age).
We know from material culture that in Southern Scandinavia Ertebolle (EBK) slowly evolved into funnelbeaker (TRB), with the sudden neolithic revolution being dated to 4000 BC. In both the North German Plain (often called Ellerbek), Denmark and South Sweden and the Northern part of the Netherlands (Swifterbant-Culture) neolithic cultures quickly developed. Yes, man still hunted, as that was done for a long time after, but animal husbandry appeared as well. Among these animals was cattle, used not just for meat, but also for milk. This is most of the time not a basic assumption, but proven by the ages at which some cattle died (or got slaughtered): many animals of an old age indicate use of secondary products (wool, milk).
Sure, there might have been people who were lactose intolerant, it can always happen.

Based on material culture there is no reason to assume colonization by settlers from Central European cultures like Michelsberg or Rössen (depending which area you are). As it's now TRB developed from Late EBK. Yes there was contact between the northern mesolithic and the southern neolithic cultures, but there's no reason to presume mass colonization by Danubian cultures as off yet.

[bleach]

I'm very sceptical about the article, not just because of the wrong dating used by the journalist (it's 4000 BC not 4000 BP, 4000 years ago is like early Bronze Age).

Not for Scandinavia it wasn't. Nordic Bronze Age began around 1700 BC. 4000 BP would be late Neolithic.

[theStig]

Around yes, but Late Neolithic still isn't hunter-gatherer. Sure, they hunted, people hunted in the Bronze Age, they still do.

[DAVIDE]

yep but rarely. Scandinavians made a massive use of agriculture/farming since the time of corded ware colture

EDIT:

[theStig]

Aye, that's what I'm saying, all of the Beaker Cultures were more or less 95% agricultural.