• Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Wikipedia has a decent summary in the History section here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk#History

    Key points, if I’m understanding things correctly:

    • Early domestication was for meat, leather and draft animals, not for milk.
    • Milk consumption started in South West Asia and later stuck around in Europe, because people there had already settled for agriculture. I think, Middle East was more nomadic?
    • The Middle East also had camels as an alternative milk source, and camel milk contains somewhat less lactose (4.6% vs. 3.5–4.5%), according to this: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8117040/
      So that might’ve also affected things somewhat? 🫠