Yes, that was a wild guess to see if someone knew because my googling failed Sindh ty.

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“Pastoralism is actually often an activity of marginal areas not too good for crops: some are lush but too humid, as you say of Atlantic Europe but others are mostly dry.”

Yes, it’s about differential calorie production rather than milk per se.

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“You are putting the cart before the horses: you have embraced too vehemently the belief in the adaptive origin of lactose tolerance and that keeps you from looking at the facts for what they are: neither cow primacy nor lush fields are requirements for lactose tolerance in real life.”

I thought it was an established theory so originally i was more surprised than embracing – though since finding the map of euro rainfall i think the onus is on alternative theories. (I’m not saying it proves anything – just a very strong correlation.)

I’m not really saying cows and lush fields are requirements i’m saying differential calorie production / consumption is what created the selective pressure (if there was one) and the highest differential is more likely to be in areas where the maximum amount of milk calories can be produced. Cows and lush fields (or camels in some environments) fit one half of that equation.

However it’s the differential that matters. There’s no selective pressure in those areas now even though they are still the best for milk production because anyone can go into a shop and buy bread. So LP, if it was selected, also likely requires an environment where there was limited production of other sources of calories at the same time.

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“There is probably some association with some populations in which pastoralism has been historically important (not necessarily bovine, not at all) but then other pastoralist populations do not display the phenotype, including some (Central Asians) exposed to very different genetic inputs, but at residual levels…So I think it’s worth considering that the evolutionary (adaptive) aspect of this phenotype’s distribution (and related alleles) may only be enhanced and not fundamentally determined everywhere by pastoralism or arguable dietetic advantages (never mind cows and lush fields).”

Sure if i had to guess i’d guess the basic allele could randomly pop up anywhere through not switching off infant lactase leading to residual levels of LP everywhere. (If so i’d imagine more east Asians have it than is assumed but maybe not the same alleles that have already been identified elsewhere). Only under very specific conditions where there was an extreme calorie differential for a period of time or over bursts of time i.e. starvation events does it expand from those residual levels.

Simple experiment, take 1000 people who have 10% LP, put them on an island with no food and airdrop 400 calories per person per day in bread and 400 calories per person per day in cheese and 400 in milk and check LP frequency after three generations. Differential starvation = selective pressure.

You are putting the cart before the horses: you have embraced too vehemently the belief in the adaptive origin of lactose tolerance and that keeps you from looking at the facts for what they are: neither cow primacy nor lush fields are requirements for lactose tolerance in real life. There is probably some association with some populations in which pastoralism has been historically important (not necessarily bovine, not at all) but then other pastoralist populations do not display the phenotype, including some (Central Asians) exposed to very different genetic inputs, but at residual levels.

So I think it’s worth considering that the evolutionary (adaptive) aspect of this phenotype’s distribution (and related alleles) may only be enhanced and not fundamentally determined everywhere by pastoralism or arguable dietetic advantages (never mind cows and lush fields).

It’s the Atlantic coast and mountainous areas i.e. very rainy areas where crops are relatively poor but cows produced exceptional amounts of milk compared to what they produce elsewhere. So the relevant neighboring populations are only along the coast not inland (except heavy rainfall inland mountainous areas like the Alps).

European rainfall: http://imageshack.us/f/527/eurprcyfz7.jpg/

Lactase persistence:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ish7688voT0/S3peNPiquTI/AAAAAAAACTA/C_Sa0T2dfrQ/s1600/lpg.png

The slipper seems to fit.

Also

Rainfall map of India: http://www.twitsnaps.com/share/fullphoto/41666_indiamapannualrainfall.jpg

Knowing nothing more than there’s a lot of LP in northern India and the assumption that there’s an optimal amount of rainfall for the grass to milk production system aka cow, i’m going to guess the highest frequency of LP in northern India will be found in the pale orangy shaded parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab with maybe an extension in the Kashmir and a few blobs along the west coast.

Predictive ability ftw.

I’d also predict those areas will have higher levels of things like wheat allergies than their neighboring less rainy, crop-dominated populations

The other interesting thing is camels i.e. Arabia, because apparently they can produce even more milk than cows – under the right conditions for camels.

Fair enough, Andrew. I also itched of some curiosity when I read that… so I made a search and found:

http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/10203/1/Verona2.pdf

Both necropolis indicate a warrying (archer) people or military burials, becaus used arrowpoints are the main grave good and arrow-caused injuries are generalized (we can assume many died from such injuries). Adult males are unnaturally dominant in both sites.

Neither burial is megalithic (they are just south of the Megalithic area) but a dolmen from Catalonia discussed in the same paper (Can Martorell) also indicates some sort of militarization (70 arrow points, many used, and just a few pottery fragments). While there is no clear direct relation among them and the corpses, these display trauma injuries of some sort.

I think a more plausible theory is that there was migration into the region from someplace where this allele would have had selective advantage, and that something else, like RH blood types, allowed the Basque to maintain higher levels of endogamy that better preserved the source population frequency than other neighboring populations where a lack of an RH blood type barrier allowed for greater dilution of the T allele brought by other groups of migrants to Iberia.

My personal suspicion is that the Basque ethnogenesis took place right around the time of these ancient DNA samples with substantial contributions from a Bell Beaker population and that the TT homozygotes are probably Bell Beaker migrants, while the CC homozygotes are probably indigeneous peoples relative to the Bell Beaker migrants. But, I’d love to see a richer description of the cultural and physical anthropology corrolates of the individuals and sites from which these samples are drawn.