A sweeping analysis of over 8,000 genomes from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan has demonstrated that South Asians’ ability to digest milk has roots in ancientmigrations. Most South Asians inherited the capacity to digest milk in adulthood from ancient Steppe herders, except for the Todas in south India and Gujjars in northwest India and Pakistan whose pastoralist lifestyles appear to have favoured unusually high milk tolerance, the study has shown. Their study, released as a preprint, has shown that unlike in other worldwide populations, the prevalence of lactase persistence is almost entirely explained through Steppe ancestry. However, the study showed that two pastoral communities — the Todas in south India and the Gujjars in northwest India and Pakistan — stood out, with lactase persistence as high as 89 per cent. Their earlier study published in 2012 had found that a gene variant for lactase persistence that originated in Europe accounted for nearly all lactase persistence variation in South Asia.

Source: The Telegraph December 26, 2025 00:38 UTC