The idea is that raw milk would not have been available to palaeolithic-era hunter-gatherers unless the animals they killed were pregnant females or  females with very young cubs/foals, given no domestication of animals at the time. One could perhaps assume that palaeo HGs would have been more environmentally-conscious for survival reasons  and mainly only  culled  the weaker males in any herd, but that is, admittedly, a wild stretch of imagination on my part. On a less scientific note, I have read somewhere that most breast-milk is produced "to order" by activation of certain hormones which start up certain mammary glands, so that the breasts first need stimulation by the infant in order to produce lots more milk. In other words, much of the raw milk a baby drinks is not already in the breast as otherwise that would mean that womens' breasts would have to be much bigger to hold it all. So, the idea is that raw milk from other species would have been negligible in quantity in the Palaeo human's diet, since the milk would have come from dead carcasses.

It should also be noted that the length of time of having eaten a certain food, even in small amounts,  does not imply adaptation. I recall one other PF-member who pointed out, elsewhere, that giant pandas have been eating lots of bamboo for millions of years, and yet still have guts which are mainly carnivore-oriented, so that they clearly haven't adapted to bamboo-eating at all.

Oh, one last thing:- I have come across claims that wolves generally avoid eating the stomach-contents of their prey(the latter usually consists of plant-matter), except possibly during periods of starvation. Maybe Palaeo HGs also followed that practice as regards not eating the milk-content of udders?

Geoff






"This is a purely non-confrontational or argumentative question.  Just simple curiosity here!  Why is it "Paleo-OK" to consume all (or mostly all) parts of an animal, but not their milk?  (Unless it's pasteurized, obviously.  I am talking raw milk here.)  "
 
Love,
Bren