![]() ![]() The research team, led by Joachim Burger and colleagues at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), found that despite the battle occurring more than 4,000 years after the introduction of agriculture in Europe - which in part would have involved the consumption of dairy from early cattle, goats and sheep domesticates - only one in eight of the warriors had a genetic variant that enabled them to break down lactose. Veeramah, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution in the College of Arts and Sciences, led part of the research that involved analyzing how the overall genetic ancestry of the battlefield population compared to other modern and ancient populations, and then compared the frequency of the lactase-persistent allele to other modern and ancient populations, particularly medieval European populations. ![]() Despite being more than three thousand years old, the researchers were able to sequence DNA from some of the bone fragments recovered from the battle site. The battle occurred on the banks of the Tollense, a river in present day Germany, and is the most significant that we know about from Bronze Age Europe, probably consisting of about 4,000 warriors, almost a quarter of which died during the fighting. Many of these people are from Central or Northern Europe. However, a subset of humans have a genetic mutation that enables the enzyme lactase to digest the lactose sugar found in milk throughout an individual's lifetime. Generally, no mammal digests milk as an adult, which is why for example people should not give adult cat or dog pets milk. Despite the prominence of milk drinking in Europe and North American today, approximately two-thirds of the world's population remains lactose intolerant. ![]()
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