Malaria as the Invisible Cartographer of Ancient Africa

A Science Advances study shows malaria risk helped shape where Sub-Saharan Africans lived over 74,000 years, using mosquito distribution models and paleoclimate data to compute a 'malaria stability index' and revealing humans avoided high-malaria zones until around 14,000–13,000 years ago, a shift that aligns with the emergence of the sickle cell mutation and highlights disease as a key driver of ancient human geography and population structure.