>I wonder why Europeans should have higher alcohol tolerance than other
>groups that must have had access to alcohol much longer, like the
>Chinese and some Africans.

Well, their answer seems to be that those who adapted
were the ones who where forced by necessity to include it
(dairy, alcohol) as a major part of their diet. For example, they
say Asians used boiling to kill microbes, and added leaves
to augment the flat taste. Europeans, on the other hand, used
fermentation/alcohol to sterilize water. Same with milk, in that
while some populations had access to milk, they may not have
been forced to subsist largely on it. Again, this is all theory.
I would love it if anyone has more information.





6/10/2003 10:26:23 AM, Tom Bridgeland <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>On Tuesday, June 10, 2003, at 10:51  AM, Lillian Alicia wrote:
>> LOL,you should see the horses in Maui after they eat a bunch of fallen,
>> fermented mangoes.  Ever seen a drunk horse?
>>
>>
>We used to feed the pony wild marijuana that grew along the fencerow,
>but we could never find enough to have any visible effect. The stuff
>never grows where grazing animals live, they love it.
>
>I wonder why Europeans should have higher alcohol tolerance than other
>groups that must have had access to alcohol much longer, like the
>Chinese and some Africans. Seems strange to me. (That goes for milk
>tolerance as well.) Europe was so far behind in agriculture, as well as
>having a much shorter fruiting season, that it should be one of the
>places where people have the least tolerance, not the most. My guess is
>that it is purely  chance variation in the founding populations, not
>selection at work.
>
>