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Saturday, February 18, 2012

Evolutionists Ignorant of Culture


Alice C. Linsley

Culture and human ingenuity are rarely noted in the Evolutionist scheme. Instead, humans evolve mechanistically.  No wonder many find the evolutionary view of human origins laughable and insulting.

Evolutionists maintain that our ancestors emerged in southern East Africa and evolved from fruit-eating primates to scavengers and then to hunters.  Their bodies and social customs adapted to changing environmental conditions.  This view is exemplified by the assumed gradual "development of lactose tolerance in adult humans—a genetic mutation selected for in populations that herd animals and consume dairy."

This reasoning fails to consider breast milk, goat milk and milk mixed with cow's blood. In other words, it reveals ignorance of African practices. In tribal areas, and among the nomadic Maasai, infants are typically breast fed for up to 6 years. By that age most children are able to tolerate cow milk, and if not cow's milk, goat's milk. Archaic East African peoples had cows and goats, as well as sheep.


Nubian goat milk

The Nubian goat has been herded by Nilotic peoples for thousands of years. Goat milk is more easily tolerated by children than cow's milk. An estimated 20 to 50 percent of all infants tested with cow's milk protein intolerance reacted adversely to soy proteins (Lothe et al., 1982), yet 40 percent tolerated goat milk proteins (Brenneman, 1978; Zeman, 1982).


The Nubian goat is the oldest known species of goat

Swedish studies have shown that cow milk was a major cause of colic in 12 to 30 percent formula-fed, less than 3-month-old infants (Lothe et al., 1982). In breast-fed infants, colic was related to the mother's consumption of cow milk (Baldo, 1984; Cant et al., 1985; Host et al., 1988). In older infants, the incidence of cow milk protein intolerance was approximately 20 percent (Nestle, 1987).

Goat milk fat normally has 35 percent of medium chain fatty acids (C6-C14) compared to cow milk fat 17 percent. Three are named after goats: Caproic (C6), caprylic (C8), capric (C10), totaling 15 percent in goat milk fat vs. only 5 percent in cow milk fat (See Table 1 here).

Capric, caprylic and other medium chain fatty acids are used to treat malabsorption syndrome, intestinal disorders, coronary diseases, pre-mature infant nutrition, cystic fibrosis, and gallstones. They provide energy and lower, inhibit and dissolve cholesterol deposits (Schwabe et al., 1964; Greenberger and Skillman, 1969; Kalser, 1971; Tantibhedhyangkul and Hashim, 1975, 1978).


The healthy Maasai

The Maasai of East Africa have a limited diet. It consists mostly milk and blood, which one might expect would result in a poor health. However, German researcher Nadja Knoll found the opposite proved true.

Maasai  making "porridge"
Knoll was part of a joint project with Kenyan scientists from the Jomo Kenyatta University and the Jena University which focused on the diet of the nomadic Maasai in Kenya's Kajiado District. She found that "the Maasai are in a good health status in spite of a limited diet."

Blood tests showed that there is a high content of healthy omega-3 fatty acids in the Maasais' red blood cell walls, even though these acids are not ingested.

The scientists discovered that the Maasai have strongly sweetened milk tea for breakfast. Some Maasai eat a kind of "porridge" in the morning, a liquid mixture of cornmeal, water, some milk and sugar.

For lunch and dinner there is milk fermented in calabashes, producing a yoghurt-like drink with pro-biotic benefits. This is taken with "Ugali," a kind of polenta made from cornmeal and water.

According to this study the Maasai diet is more than 50 percent vegetarian. The preferred meat is that of sheep and goats. Cows are slaughtered and eaten only for ritual festivities, though their blood is draw once a month and mixed with milk. This mixture of milk and blood is taken at weddings, at rites of passage and is given as a tonic to the sick, the elderly, and women who have just given birth.


Maasai cow bleeding
(Photo Claudia Chang and Christina Erb)

A leather strap is tightened around the cow's neck to force a vein to the surface. A warrior shoots an arrow into the vein and the blood is drained into a gourd. No more than 3 liters of blood is taken at a time. The wound is sealed with mud and the animal is released to the herd.

Bovine serum albumin (BSA) has an unusually high bioavailability, allowing for the absorption of many amino acids that aid healing and health. Studies show that the immunoglobulins extracted from healthy bovine peripheral blood are effective in boosting the immune system.

Similarly, Mongolian warriors preferred to ride lactating mares so they could use them as milk animals. However, in times of shortage, they slit a minor vein in their horse's neck to drain some blood into a cup. They mixed this drink either with milk or water.

2 comments:

Jonathan said...

So, if the greater part of the conventionally accepted human evolutionary theory has been misguided (according to your contentions here) in ignoring the important role of "culture" -- by which you mean, in this post, food culture especially -- in particular, eating of goat's milk and blood as is "traditional" among the Masaai people of East Africa, what sort of reformed conclusion would evolutionary scientists arrive at if they could bring themselves to accept the greater role of this kind of culture, instead of plodding along in the conventional wisdom? That Masaai (and other societies who use goat's milk and blood) are the most favorably evolved examples on the planet today? I'm not trying to be polemical here: I'm just not sure I am following all your argument! And, how do you explain the long persistence, among the chosen ones of Abraham's seed, of a strong teaching (a culture, maybe) that says the opposite: that we are to abhor the consumption of blood, and especially from blood mingled with milk? (Cf. Acts 15:29; Acts 21:25) Doesn't your promoting of the Masaai diet, as today's post suggests you are about to do, wreak havoc with the old arguments about how the observance of the Mosaic Law was actually good for --among other things -- one's physical health?

Alice C. Linsley said...

The evolutionary assumption that humans gradually developed lactose tolerance is ridiculous and refuted by anthropolgical studies of "primitive" or "pre-literate" societies.

The Masaai diet is a healthy one, because their highly prized cattle are healthy. There are good reasons to avoid blood because, as we know, it can carry pathogens.

The prohibition against consuming blood among the Horim set them apart from other Nilotic peoples. Kosher laws about what could be eaten with what, and avoidance of sowing two kinds of seeds in the same field, and not mixing different fibers, and not boiling a kid in its mother's milk, developed over time and reflect priestly and rabbinic thought on the binary order of creation.