On Tue, 7 Jun 2005 10:08, Ken Stuart wrote:

>On Mon, 6 Jun 2005 15:00, Jim Swayze wrote:
>
>>I don't believe that milk in any form -- other than human milk
>>for the first few years of your life -- is paleo.  Perhaps partial
>>adaptation has occurred in certain populations.
>>
>>Cordain: "Hominins, like all mammals, would have consumed
>>the milk of their own species during the suckling period.
>>However, after weaning, the consumption of milk and milk
>>products of other mammals would have been nearly impossible...."
>
>This seems to be based on Cordain's principle of "what did they eat",
>rather than Ray's principle of "what could you eat with a sharpened stick".
>
>It seems to me that old-style shepherds and dairy farmers don't need more than a
>sharpened stick.

Ray's 'sharpened stick' is a useful guide, but it's not applicable simply to all possible foods.  Dairy
products might not have needed much more than a shapened stick, but milking wild goats,
camels, sheep, horses or cattle would have required some domestication - fences, bails or similar
and cheese making would require containers and probably some heating and / or cooling. So, I
can't think that cheese is a palaeo food.  On the other hand, it appears that many humans have
adapted to goats' milk, even though the numbers adpated to cows' milk are fewer.

Keith