the ability to grow vegetables and to domesticate animals improved the chances to avoid periods of famine, and represented a major advance in civilization. However, one problem was that this forced humans to eat new types of food. One of these was starch, which is the principal carbohydrate stored in many plants. Starch consists of many polymers of glucose and requires an enzyme (amylase) to degrade it so that it can be absorbed. Recently it was discovered that many humans living in farming populations carry a more active form of amylase compared to populations that subsist by hunting and
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