Thursday, December 23, 2021

Sweep

Welp, we got let out early. So on topic of the Kentish Invasion, Razib Khan points to this lactase-persistence chart. He recommends it for textbooks on "selective sweeps".

Milk doing a "Briton" good actually started in the Middle Bronze Age, diverging from Central Europe about 2000 BC. 1400 BC represents an inflexion as the numbers pivot upward. Inevitably it tapers, toward today's 0.8 (80%), over the first century or two BC. (That's about when Central Europe starts its own rise.) Seems like Kent's killer app.

Animal husbandry made sense on an island never quite as fertile as France, nor as wooded as Germany. Continental livestock was, I guess, the pig, which nobody milks. Cows too; but if they had more land so more cattle, they could spare cattle like pigs, for hides and meat. Sure, cheeses, butters, and yoghourts too; but these keep and ship better (Louis Pasteur as yet unborn), so go for export. Across the Channel, nobody was that big a landowner. Each farm needed to make the most of Bessie - right there, right now. That milk got drunk at home.

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