Humans can digest milk thanks to a mutation

  • Lactasa makes possible that adult human beings digest milk
Lactasa makes possible that adult human beings digest milk
 

No-one knows why humans suddenly developed the gene that allows 35% of us to drink milk into adulthood, or how it happened so quickly - over just 20,000 years. Scientists think it may have been a case of adapt or die. In Neolithic times, dairy was a great source of nutrients when other food was scarce, so perhaps you could say humans really milked that gene. (Sorry for the cheesy pun).