Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys - Not so much!

Kevin Stroud's "The History of English podcast" is still going strong and is a fascinating listen. One interesting snippet of information from a recent episode was that one possible explanation of the success of the steppe-peoples who spoke the proto-indo-european language, and their expansion out of their ancestral lands north of the Black Sea around 2500BC, was the acquisition of the ability to digest lactose and the subsequent development of dairy farming. The ability to process lactose gave them a significant nutritional advantage to the extent that archeological evidence suggests that they were on average 3 to 4 inches taller than the people they supplanted in Eastern Europe. Together with their domestication of the horse and their use of the chariot in battle, they were able to expand out of the steppes, taking their language with them.