The operation of the milk of sheep, goats and cattle had started there 12 500 years. European researchers will try, in particular in genetics, to rewrite the history of its consumption.

Why we drink milk? Since when? What will happen to adulthood? Fifteen teams of scientists from seven European countries are plunging their research in the white wine with the hope to better answer these questions and wring their necks to some rumors in the first and foremost the idea that consumption of milk, particularly in France, is very recent. According to the latest assumptions which, although still to be confirmed, "the operation of the milk of sheep, goats and cattle had started domestication there are 12 500 years." Milk consumption is so ingrained in our eating habits it seems almost inherent in human life. However, all civilizations have not eaten in the same way that drink from cattle, sheep or goats.

Therefore, a complex that researchers whose project bears the name of sweet Leche (Lactase Persistence and the Early Cultural History of Europe) attack. Some will find out if the animals were bred for their milk, for meat, for their strength, or all three. "For fifteen years, we can see if there are any traces of milk products in ceramics," says Martine Regert, director of research at the CNRS research center Prehistory, Antiquity, Middle Ages.

Others address the question of intolerance to milk and the big differences in the material from one individual to another. To be digested, the lactose content in milk requires an enzyme called lactase, which depends on the presence of a gene now identified. All babies have this enzyme that disappears as we advance in age, but unevenly.

The French drink less than twice the Nordiques

"It was found that the persistence of the gene encoding lactase is found especially among people who have a very old tradition of farming," explains Jean-Denis Vigne, archéozoologue at the Natural History Museum. But then, the inhabitants of the Middle East, a region of origin of the dairy cow from 8 500 BC, are much less likely to be carriers of the gene than those of Europe between Hungary and Germany, "where the domestic cow was introduced two thousand years later, "said Museum.

"The persistence of lactase activity in adulthood is even close to 100% in the Nordic countries, it is less than 50% in the Mediterranean regions," added the organization. "People who carry the gene have an advantage over others. Where, how and when was it developed? "Is one of the questions to which researchers will tackle, said Jean-Denis Vigne. Against the backdrop of a plausible explanation: we have always drank lots of milk in the North, which could include retaining more easily, while the South had used yoghurt or cheese, which no longer contain lactose or almost. France as such falls under the category of the South with a consumption of 70 liters of milk per year per capita. While the double is in the north.

Other researchers have gone, in turn, consolidate data from archeology, anthropology and genetics to understand the models simulated animal domestication, the dairy farm and demographic history of Europeans. In four years, life time of the program, all hope to present some additional pieces to the puzzle of the joint history of men and milk.

The French consume twice less milk than the inhabitants of northern Europe