Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe
Resource type
Journal article
Creator (person)
Evershed, Richard P
Davey Smith, George
Roffet-Salque, Mélanie
Timpson, Adrian
Diekmann, Yoan
Lyon, Matthew S
Cramp, Lucy J E
Casanova, Emmanuelle
Smyth, Jessica
Whelton, Helen L
Dunne, Julie
Brychova, Veronika
Å oberl, Lucija
Gerbault, Pascale
Gillis, Rosalind E
Heyd, Volker
Johnson, Emily
Kendall, Iain
Manning, Katie
Marciniak, Arkadiusz
Outram, Alan K
Vigne, Jean-Denis
Shennan, Stephen
Bevan, Andrew
Colledge, Sue
Allason-Jones, Lyndsay
Amkreutz, Luc
Anders, Alexandra
Arbogast, Rose-Marie
Bălăşescu, Adrian
Bà¡nffy, Eszter
Barclay, Alistair
Behrens, Anja
Bogucki, Peter
Carrancho Alonso, à ngel
Carretero, José Miguel
Cavanagh, Nigel
ClaàŸen, Erich
Collado Giraldo, Hipolito
Conrad, Matthias
Csengeri, Piroska
Czerniak, Lech
Dębiec, Maciej
Denaire, Anthony
Domborà³czki, Là¡szlà³
Donald, Christina
Ebert, Julia
Evans, Christopher
Francés-Negro, Marta
Gronenborn, Detlef
Haack, Fabian
Halle, Matthias
Hamon, Caroline
Hà¼lshoff, Roman
Ilett, Michael
Iriarte, Eneko
Jakucs, Jà¡nos
Jeunesse, Christian
Johnson, Melanie
Jones, Andy M
Karul, Necmi
Kiosak, Dmytro
Kotova, Nadezhda
Krause, Rà¼diger
Kretschmer, Saskia
Krà¼ger, Marta
Lefranc, Philippe
Lelong, Olivia
Lenneis, Eva
Logvin, Andrey
Là¼th, Friedrich
Marton, Tibor
Marley, Jane
Mortimer, Richard
Oosterbeek, Luiz
Oross, Krisztià¡n
Pavàºk, Juraj
Pechtl, Joachim
Pétrequin, Pierre
Pollard, Joshua
Pollard, Richard
Powlesland, Dominic
Pyzel, Joanna
Raczky, Pà¡l
Richardson, Andrew
Rowe, Peter
Rowland, Stephen
Rowlandson, Ian
Saile, Thomas
Sebők, Katalin
Schier, Wolfram
SchmalfuàŸ, Germo
Sharapova, Svetlana
Sharp, Helen
Sheridan, Alison
Shevnina, Irina
Sobkowiak-Tabaka, Iwona
Stadler, Peter
Stà¤uble, Harald
Stobbe, Astrid
Stojanovski, Darko
Tasić, Nenad
van Wijk, Ivo
Vostrovskà¡, Ivana
Vuković, Jasna
Wolfram, Sabine
Zeeb-Lanz, Andrea
Thomas, Mark G
Date published
August 11, 2022
Abstract
In European and many African, Middle Eastern and southern Asian populations, lactase persistence (LP) is the most strongly selected monogenic trait to have evolved over the past 10,000 years1. Although the selection of LP and the consumption of prehistoric milk must be linked, considerable uncertainty remains concerning their spatiotemporal configuration and specific interactions2,3. Here we provide detailed distributions of milk exploitation across Europe over the past 9,000 years using around 7,000 pottery fat residues from more than 550 archaeological sites. European milk use was widespread from the Neolithic period onwards but varied spatially and temporally in intensity. Notably, LP selection varying with levels of prehistoric milk exploitation is no better at explaining LP allele frequency trajectories than uniform selection since the Neolithic period. In the UK Biobank4,5 cohort of 500,000 contemporary Europeans, LP genotype was only weakly associated with milk consumption and did not show consistent associations with improved fitness or health indicators. This suggests that other reasons for the beneficial effects of LP should be considered for its rapid frequency increase. We propose that lactase non-persistent individuals consumed milk when it became available but, under conditions of famine and/or increased pathogen exposure, this was disadvantageous, driving LP selection in prehistoric Europe. Comparison of model likelihoods indicates that population fluctuations, settlement density and wild animal exploitation—proxies for these drivers—provide better explanations of LP selection than the extent of milk exploitation. These findings offer new perspectives on prehistoric milk exploitation and LP evolution.
Journal title
Nature
Volume
608
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
ISSN
0028-0836
eISSN
1476-4687
Date accepted
June 22, 2022
Official URL
Rights statement
In Copyright
Keywords