A new study suggests malaria played a major role in shaping where prehistoric humans settled across sub-Saharan Africa, challenging long-held beliefs that migration patterns were driven mainly by agriculture and climate.
Published in Science Advances, the research found that early humans avoided malaria-prone regions more than 70,000 years ago—long before farming spread across the continent between 3000 and 1000 BC. Researchers reconstructed ancient climate conditions and compared them with maps of early settlements, using data tied to habitats of Anopheles mosquitoes, which transmit the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum. The findings indicate that disease influenced population distribution at least 13,000 years before agriculture emerged. Scientists say the study highlights how infectious diseases shaped human evolution and migration far earlier than previously believed, opening new avenues for research into how ancient diseases affected human history and settlement patterns.
