The Land of Lactose and Mead

Posted by James Bowery on Sunday, 05 April 2009 16:29.

I’ll have more to say about it later, but one of the things that struck me while reading “The 10,000 Year Explosion” by Cochran and Harpending is their theory of Indo-European expansion (p181):

We suggest that the advantage driving those Indo-European expansions was biological—a high frequency of the European lactose-tolerance mutation (the 1390-T allele).

Certainly plausible since, as they point out, not only does it expand the carrying capacity of grasslands by a factor of 5, it confers greater mobility than other forms of agriculture.

But they also mention the widely accepted fact that the Indo-Europeans were mead drinkers—although they don’t mention the fact that mead was also so highly prized that it was routinely used in rituals—quite possibly because the highest concentrations of sugars—hence fermented spirits—available to them was honey rather than grapes.

Which is all my way of introducing the idea that “The Land of Milk and Honey” would have had more significance to the Indo-Europeans than to a lactose intolerant group that didn’t have mead as its primary ritual drink.

This is something the Christian Identity folks should have picked up on but I don’t recall any references to that theory by them.

Tags:

Comments:

Posted by Lurker on Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:49 | #

Sorry to go O/T James.

MR should link to this guy:
http://scotchfiend.blogspot.com/

Posted by James Bowery on Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:09 | #

New American Bible translation:

Exodus
Chapter 33

1
The LORD told Moses, “You and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, are to go up from here to the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob I would give to their descendants.
2
Driving out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, I will send an angel before you
3
to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I myself will not go up in your company, because you are a stiff-necked people; otherwise I might exterminate you on the way.”
4
When the people heard this bad news, they went into mourning, and no one wore his ornaments.
5
The LORD said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites: You are a stiff-necked people. Were I to go up in your company even for a moment, I would exterminate you. Take off your ornaments, therefore; I will then see what I am to do with you.”
6
So, from Mount Horeb onward, the Israelites laid aside their ornaments.
7
1 The tent, which was called the meeting tent, Moses used to pitch at some distance away, outside the camp. Anyone who wished to consult the LORD would go to this meeting tent outside the camp.
8
Whenever Moses went out to the tent, the people would all rise and stand at the entrance of their own tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent.
9
As Moses entered the tent, the column of cloud would come down and stand at its entrance while the LORD spoke with Moses.
10
On seeing the column of cloud stand at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise and worship at the entrance of their own tents.
11
The LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one man speaks to another. Moses would then return to the camp, but his young assistant, Joshua, son of Nun, would not move out of the tent.
12
Moses said to the LORD, “You, indeed, are telling me to lead this people on; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘You are my intimate friend,’ and also, ‘You have found favor with me.’
13
Now, if I have found favor with you, do let me know your ways so that, in knowing you, I may continue to find favor with you. Then, too, this nation is, after all, your own people.”
14
2 “I myself,” the LORD answered, “will go along, to give you rest.”
15
Moses replied, “If you are not going yourself, do not make us go up from here.
16
For how can it be known that we, your people and I, have found favor with you, except by your going with us? Then we, your people and I, will be singled out from every other people on the earth.”
17
The LORD said to Moses, “This request, too, which you have just made, I will carry out, because you have found favor with me and you are my intimate friend.”
18
Then Moses said, “Do let me see your glory!”
19
He answered, “I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name, ‘LORD’; I who show favors to whom I will, I who grant mercy to whom I will.
20
But my face you cannot see, for no man sees me and still lives.
21
Here,” continued the LORD, “is a place near me where you shall station yourself on the rock.
22
When my glory passes I will set you in the hollow of the rock and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.
23
3 Then I will remove my hand, so that you may see my back; but my face is not to be seen.”

Posted by Ernest Wesley on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:16 | #

If you drink a pint of milk a day, no problem, you are not a Jew?

BTW posters here may be interested in .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Paul Gottfried has it just about right.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:16 | #

Ernest Westley asks: If you drink a pint of milk a day, no problem, you are not a Jew?

You aren’t doing Paul Gottfried any favors by associating him with such obtuseness.

Posted by ben tillman on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:30 | #

Driving out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, I will send an angel before you

3

to the land flowing with milk and honey.

Wow - it never occurred to me that those tribes might have been “white”.

Posted by Ernest Wesley on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:45 | #

James Bowery says: You aren’t doing Paul Gottfried any favors by associating him with such obtuseness.

Unless I failed to discern the post as a joke I see nothing obtuse in my comment. If I am stupid please point out why. If only Indo-Europeans are fine with milk en masse then the Jews I have met are Indo-European. If not this post is nonsense.

Posted by James Bowery on Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:39 | #

Ben, so I suppose the correspondence between “milk and honey” and “lactose tolerance and mead” never struck you before either, huh?

Ernest: Let me count the ways…. naw, its not worth my time but here’s one for you:

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:27 | #

The Hittites were white, Ben, but I don’t think they extended quite as far south as Israel. Almost, but not quite. They were more to the north, based in Anatolia with some extension down toward Lebanon and Syria but not as far as Palestine if memory serves.

That’s a very interesting interpretation James has proposed. In other words, God, in referring to the land of milk and honey, may simply have been identifying the place by the products typical of the races who dwelled there (assuming those races included at least some Indo-Europeans) the way Germany might be referred to as the land of beer and sausages, France the land of wine and crêpes, or Vermont the land of maple syrup.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:49 | #

Some scholars suspect the ancient Trojans were a branch of the Hittites, speaking a Hittite language called Luwian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luwian

Posted by zuwr on Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:02 | #

“Certainly plausible since, as they point out, not only does it expand the carrying capacity of grasslands by a factor of 5, it confers greater mobility than other forms of agriculture.”

I wonder if Cochran and Harpending are overstating their case. Presumably the Israelites made yogurt or cheese from the milk (whether milk from a goat, sheep, camel, or cow is not that revelant), since most of their group members are lactose intolerant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Lactose_intolerance_by_group

The lactose gene gives one access to the lactose calories in milk. The other calories can be recovered by using the milk to make yogurt or cheese. Lactose accounts for 20 out of 60 calories in 100g of milk. Going from 40 to 60 calories is a 50% bonus.

http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/69/2

If dairy products allow one 5 times the calories, then not having the lactose gene gives one access to only 3.3 times the calories through yogurt or cheese.

Posted by Fr. John on Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:49 | #

“This is something the Christian Identity folks should have picked up on but I don’t recall any references to that theory by them.”

James, I don’t think there are any nutritional biologists among them…. not that they wouldn’t want any, just that to hold to the premises of any variant of CI, most of your energy is directed against an evolutionary, ‘We are all descended from the apes’ mindset.

Which leaves very few creationist, or OEC types out there, that see multiculturalism as heresy.

So, it’s more a subset of a subset thing, rather than a ‘gee, we overlooked that’- though they clearly have.
At least SWB [www.spiritwaterblood.com] is noting your comment, and included it in their latest column.

Neither they, nor I ignore the insights that arise from the most unusual places.

http://thewhitechrist.wordpress.com/

But, thanks anyway. As the characters in the VeggieTales Children’s videos said of a ‘land of milk and honey’:’

“Sounds kinda sticky to me!”

And, having tasted the overpowering sweetness of mead, I can add a hearty ‘Huzzah!’ to the knowledge that, yet again, my race has prover herself to be in the forefront of God’s good things to be enjoyed on this Earth.

Happy Easter/Pascha to you all!

Posted by James Bowery on Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:18 | #

zuwr writes: “If dairy products allow one 5 times the calories, then not having the lactose gene gives one access to only 3.3 times the calories through yogurt or cheese.”

Good catch. And thanks for going to the trouble to quantify it. Although in a subsistence grassland culture, even that much smaller advantage is still plausibly decisive.

That brings up another important question:

How was the climate hence ecology changing in that area during that time? If there was a transition to grains then Nile-adapted folks could just as plausibly have enjoyed a newly emerged, and decisive, advantage.

Posted by Ernest Wesley on Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:32 | #

James Bowery: Your last comment only comes up as a line.

Posted by Al Ross on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:24 | #

Every Christian should have ‘Leviticus 19:28’ (KJV) tattooed somewhere upon his person.

Posted by A son of Arminius on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:13 | #

For anyone who wants to get in touch with your “inner Indo-European”, the Time-Life book “The Cooking of Scandinavia” has any easy recipe for making the lemon-flavored Finnish mead called Sima. It’s a cheap way to get smashed too!

Posted by zuwr on Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:43 | #

I’ve been reading some Loren Cordain. His big thing is that humans should eat paleolithic foods and avoid neolithic foods which have been domesticated in the last 10,000 years. No grain, no potatoes, no diary, no beans. He argues that humans haven’t had enough time to evolve to handle neolithic foods. Humans shifted to eating grain when the many species of large mammals were hunted to extinction. Meat eating was preferred, but they didn’t have a choice. There may be holes or exceptions to Cordain’s arguments, but I am inclined to believe that he is at least half right. If we evolved, then evolution has consequences for the human diet.

With regards to diary, just because milk is digestible by Indo-Europeans, doesn’t mean that it is an optimal food. Remember the African adaptation to malaria, the sickle cell gene, is sub-optimal and gives many of them problems. The first genetic adaptation tends to be crude and makes a fast selective sweep. Refined adaptations make slower selective sweeps.