The Tibetan Plateau, known as the "third pole", or "roof of the world", is one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. While positive natural selection at several genomic loci enabled early Tibetans to better adapt to high elevations, obtaining sufficient food from the resource-poor highlands would have remained a challenge.
Now, a new study in the journal Science Advances reveals that dairy was a key component of early human diets on the Tibetan Plateau. The study reports ancient proteins from the dental calculus of 40 human individuals from 15 sites across the interior plateau.
[...] Ancient protein evidence indicates that dairy products were consumed by diverse populations, including females and males, adults and children, as well as individuals from both elite and non-elite burial contexts. Additionally, prehistoric Tibetan highlanders made use of the dairy products of goats, sheep, and possibly cattle and yak. Early pastoralists in western Tibet seem to have had a preference for goat milk.
"The adoption of dairy pastoralism helped to revolutionize people's ability to occupy much of the plateau, particularly the vast areas too extreme for crop cultivation," says Prof. Nicole Boivin, senior author of the study.
[...] "We were excited to observe an incredibly clear pattern," says Li Tang. "All our milk peptides came from ancient individuals in the western and northern steppes, where growing crops is extremely difficult. However, we did not detect any milk proteins from the southern-central and south-eastern valleys, where more farmable land is available."
Surprisingly, all the individuals with evidence for milk consumption were recovered from sites higher than 3700 meters above sea level (masl); almost half were above 4000 masl, with the highest at the extreme altitude of 4654 masl.
"It is clear that dairying was crucial in supporting early pastoralist occupation of the highlands," notes Prof. Shargan Wangdue. "Ruminant animals could convert the energy locked in alpine pastures into nutritional milk and meat, and this fueled the expansion of human populations into some of the world's most extreme environments." Li Tang concludes.
Journal Reference:
Li Tang, Shevan Wilkin, Kristine Korzow Richter, et al., Palaeoproteomic evidence reveals dairying supported prehistoric occupation of the highland Tibetan Plateau [open], Sci. Adv., 2023. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf0345
(Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Friday April 21, @09:11PM (3 children)
I think many people know now that push to drink milk in the US had ulterior motives. That doesn't change the fact that milk is a very nutritious food (and that is why advertising alternative "milks" as such can be harmful).
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday April 21, @09:50PM (1 child)
Nothing promoted in the US in any way, shape or form is being promoted for reasons other than someone standing to make money. Always follow the money in the US.
This is often true elsewhere of course. For instance, there was a big push in France after WW2 to promote milk as a healthy source of proteins and vitamins - somethine people were in need of after the liberation - that turned out to be nothing more than the milk industry managing to convince the minister of health at the time to plug their products in the guise of a state-run health campaign. In the US though, the difference is, it's ALWAYS for profit.
(Score: 4, Touché) by RamiK on Friday April 21, @10:52PM
(NON-EMPIRICAL) It's the same everywhere.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22, @02:19PM
Nobody was confusing coconut milk, soy milk, or Milk of Magnesia for cow's milk.
That whole affair was just an industry effort to bully the competition, and I'm glad common sense prevailed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Friday April 21, @09:23PM (4 children)
Building cultures around herbivores for food in inhospitable climates is pretty common. The arctic circle would be a very different place without Caribou and Reindeer.
I'm curious how our ancestors figured out how to milk the animals. That doesn't seem like a particularly intuitive behavior.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday April 21, @09:52PM
It's true: the weather in San Francisco is awful and the number of influential vegetarians there is off the chart.
(Score: 5, Funny) by RamiK on Friday April 21, @10:56PM (2 children)
Spotted the lizard person.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday April 22, @03:46PM (1 child)
Is it customary in your culture to grab the mammary tissue of wild and semidomesticated animals? I'm not judging. YKINMK.
(Score: 3, Funny) by RamiK on Sunday April 23, @04:50PM
It usually takes written consent and, preferably, an ordained priest... But yes. In fact, it's actually how the semi- part is resolved into fully- for both parties.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 21, @10:55PM (4 children)
Asia. Highlands. I associate horse milk with Asian Highlanders. That, and reindeer milk. OK, to be fair, kumis, or fermented mare's milk, is more strongly associated with Mongolians. And, a quick search for reindeer milk references Mongolia again. Still, Tibet and Mongolia have a lot in common, as well as a shared history.
%20 [soylentnews.org]" rel="url2html-217307">https://abusonadustyroad.com/what-is-the-relationship-between-mongolia-and-tibet/>
But, back to my question: How do they know which kinds of milk the Tibetans were drinking? Most milks have similar nutritional value, after all. I don't doubt the evidence of dairy products in a people's diet, but I'd like to know which dairy animals are found at those elevations.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday April 21, @11:16PM (2 children)
I don't actually know but I think they can DNA test milk.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21, @11:57PM (1 child)
Uhhhhmmmmmm - after the milk has been digested, and incorporated into the human body's bones, teeth, and soft tissues? That sounds like quite a trick.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Saturday April 22, @12:12AM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22, @10:29AM
Similar but different, human milk has slower casein:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344440257_A_Comprehensive_Review_on_Composition_of_Donkey_Milk_in_Comparison_to_Human_Cow_Buffalo_Sheep_Goat_Camel_and_Horse_Milk [researchgate.net]
Human milk has low β-Lactoglobulin: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/food-science/human-milk-proteins [sciencedirect.com]
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20469047.2017.1289310?journalCode=ypch20 [tandfonline.com]