In response to Anna Abrante's (and earlier Todd Moody's) questions/ ideas
about dairy consumtion:

The idea that milk or simple rennet cheese (from calf's stomach) might have
been a wide-spread component of the paleolithic diet is really interresting,
but the fact that dairy food is responsible for one of the world's most
common food allergies raises some doubt in my mind.  Dairy has also been
linked to autoimmune disorders (IDDM, for example), and lactose intolerance
is common throughout the world, some regions more than others.  Even so, I
remember Todd Moody's posting on this subject, and I have to admit it got me
thinking.  Here are some thoughts:

I was suprised to hear (from Todd) that modern foragers eat the stomach
contents of the animals they kill, and was even more suprised to hear (from
Anna) that this is the first thing they eat after a kill.  Does anyone know
of a reference to confirm this?  It doesn't seem that much could be gained
by eating a handfull of partially digested vegetable matter, especially
since much of what other animals eat is inedible or even poisonous to
humans.  If modern foragers do, indeed, do this, I wonder how often they
come across milk or rennet cheese?  [In their marginal habitats, it seems
that they would be unlikely to encounter significant amounts of milk in the
stomachs of their prey due to the lack of large game mammals.  The Inuit are
an exception, in that they hunt big marine mammals, but I never heard of
them eating walrus cheese.  I wonder if those Inuit that hunt caribu and
musk ox ever eat the stomach contents of the young animals they kill?]

As for our foraging ancestors, those who lived during the late pleistocene
hunted megafauna, and so would have had access to possibly large quantities
of milk or rennet cheese in the big stomachs of some of the young animals
they killed.  I wonder, though, if the amounts of milk or rennet cheese they
encountered were truly significant (frequency of encounter and quantity),
and if so, were they habitually consumed?  I can't answer the latter, but my
guess is that encounters of significant quantity and frequency to create
adaptive pressure were not normal, because they would depend on whether or
not a suckling animal was killed, whether or not any killed suckling animals
had recently nursed, and whether or not any killed, recently-nursed animals
had nursed in such quantities as to contribute significantly to the total
nutrient content of the kill.  In addition, one also has to wonder how often
young animals were specifically targeted to begin with.  All predatory
species, including humans, seek out the weak and young to varying degrees,
but humans in many ways are unique among predators.  Evidence of large
numbers of animals being driven off of cliffs or ravines, or into marshes,
(in other words being rendered dead or helpless regardless of size or age)
makes me wonder as to just how discriminating paleolithic hunters actually
were.  And aside from the late pleistocene, there are the relatively recent
accounts of native americans hunting bison in this manner..... isn't their a
town named after it?

B. Lischer