Bronze Age humans racked up travel miles
Large-scale genetic study also shows that many of these ancient peoples were lactose intolerant
Humans’ Bronze Age ancestors were big travelers, but probably not so fond of dairy.
A large-scale study of ancient genetics, published June 11 in Nature, provides evidence for migrations and lactose intolerance in Bronze Age cultures in Eurasia.
The Bronze Age, about 3,000 to 5,000 years ago, was a time of big cultural changes, says study coauthor Morten Allentoft, a geneticist at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. Archaeologists have argued about whether those changes came from the spread of ideas or the physical migration of ancient humans, Allentoft says.