What fossil teeth can reveal about ancient diets

I found this interesting.
Researchers were even able to use isotopes to find out when one Neanderthal started weaning her baby. As teeth grow, they lay down layers of enamel. And barium, a molecule children get from breast feeding mothers, builds up in baby teeth until the mother stops nursing. By comparing barium in a Neanderthal tooth with levels in donated present day baby teeth, the scientists were able to find out that the Neanderthal baby had been weaned at about seven months.
How long is it usually for modern humans, 12 months?

Then I found this:
Anthropologists have studied the weaning customs of hunter gatherer societies, and found significant variation. The !Kung San of the Kalahari desert stop breast-feeding at around 4 or 5 years of age. The Hadza of Tanzania wean about six months earlier than the !Kung. The Aché people of Paraguay wean earlier still, at around 3 years of age. This suggests that human culture and lifestyles have influenced the practice of breast-feeding since the beginning of civilization, although anthropologists still aren’t sure exactly what factors account for the differences.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...how_nursing_worked_in_prehistoric_times_.html
Really, that long!!!
 
Given our modern lifestyles it's difficult to do it for very long, but most doctors here recommend at least 6 months, with 12 months as the goal usually.

However, even in the nineteenth century women would try to breastfeed for 18 months or two years if possible. In addition to everything else it does decrease fertility for many women. The longer the better given how much disease was passed through unpasteurized milk before the days of refrigeration, although they didn't know that.
 
I guess for HG brestfeeding was the easiest way to feed the children and they would continue this as long as possible.
 
Why do some people even so called experts think you should take cow milk?
Who said that originally?

mojoii.com
 
Why do some people even so called experts think you should take cow milk?
Who said that originally?

mojoii.com

The genetic change that enabled early Europeans to drink milk without getting sick has been mapped to dairying farmers who lived around 7,500 years ago in a region between the central Balkans and central Europe. Previously, it was thought that natural selection favoured milk drinkers only in more northern regions because of their greater need for vitamin D in their diet. People living in most parts of the world make vitamin D when sunlight hits the skin, but in northern latitudes there isn’t enough sunlight to do this for most of the year.

“Most adults worldwide do not produce the enzyme lactase and so are unable to digest the milk sugar lactose,” says Professor Mark Thomas, UCL Genetics, Evolution and Environment. “However, most Europeans continue to produce lactase throughout their life, a characteristic known as lactase persistence. In Europe, a single genetic change (13,910*T) is strongly associated with lactase persistence and appears to have given people with it a big survival advantage. Since adult consumption of fresh milk was only possible after the domestication of animals, it is likely that lactase persistence co-evolved with the cultural practice of dairying, although it was not known when it first arose in Europe or what factors drove its rapid spread.”

Many reasons have been put forward for why being able to drink fresh milk should be such an advantage. For example, milk can compensate for the lack of sunlight and synthesis of vitamin D in skin at more northern latitudes, since vitamin D is required for calcium absorption and milk provides a good dietary source of both nutrients. Milk also provides a calorie- and protein-rich food source, comes in a relatively constant supply compared to the boom-and-bust of seasonal crops, and would have been less contaminated than water supplies.
 
The genetic change that enabled early Europeans to drink milk without getting sick has been mapped to dairying farmers who lived around 7,500 years ago in a region between the central Balkans and central Europe.

That hypothesis is based on modern DNA. DNA from Neolithic Europeans show they were not lactose tolerant. The first occurrence of lactose tolerance appears in Bell Beaker-Germany, BA-Ireland, and Srubnaya-Russia about 4,000 years ago. A time-seris of DNA from Poland shows that Lactose tolerance became normal only about 2,500 years ago.
 
Ancient DNA points ancient "Basques" of the Chalcolithic were already 30% lactose tolerant, so before BB and Srubnaya.
 

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