At first glance, settling on the roof of the world doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea. Tibet is considered one of the most inhospitable regions in the world, the third pole on earth alongside the Arctic and Antarctic. On average, the country is 4500 meters high, in winter it is freezing cold. In addition to the altitude, the barren soils in large parts of the plateau make survival difficult. Just what did the early inhabitants of Tibet live on? Scientists are now providing the answer. It reads: It was dairy products.
Like the research team led by archaeologist Li Tang from the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena in the specialist magazine Science Advances reported, corresponding indications were found in the tartar of 40 individuals who had been buried a long time ago at 15 different locations on the high plateau. “Our protein evidence shows that dairy farming was introduced in the hinterland of the plateau at least 3,500 years ago,” comments Hongliang Lu of Sichuan University, co-author of the study, according to a statement from the Max Planck Institute. The milk was apparently there for everyone. Traces of protein have been found in men and women, adults and children, in the graves of elite and average people.
The bodies of the Tibetans also adapted to the high altitude air
The new findings are due to advances in the analysis of ancient traces. So far, archaeologists have reconstructed the human diet primarily on the basis of animal remains and samples from food containers. With modern protein analysis, it is possible to clearly deduce the nutrition of individual individuals as well as which animals it was from whose milk people fed. Accordingly, the prehistoric pastoralists of Tibet primarily used the milk of goats and sheep, perhaps also that of cows and yaks. “Ruminating animals were able to convert the energy of alpine pastures into nutritious milk and meat, allowing human populations to proliferate in one of the most extreme environments on earth,” says Li Tang.
The researchers came across a clear geographical pattern: they only found traces of milk in the western and northern steppes, which are hardly suitable for agriculture. However, in the southern and southeastern valleys, where there is more arable land, they found no traces of milk consumption.
Other researchers had already shown in earlier studies that that the bodies of the Tibetans have also adapted to the mountain air in the Himalayas. Most of them have a gene variant that ensures that the so-called hemoglobin content in the blood only increases slightly even at high altitudes – very different from that of lowland dwellers. A lot of hemoglobin normally binds more oxygen in the red blood cells and thus enables efficient breathing in thin air, which often leads to the typical altitude sickness of mountaineers, i.e. dizziness, headaches, sleep and circulatory disorders. Tibetans don’t suffer from it – but many of the Chinese who have moved to the country from the lowlands in recent years do.