How Has Malaria Shaped Human Populations?

Archaeology Magazine ^ | April 24, 2026 | editors / unattributed

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According to a statement released by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, an international team of researchers compared models for the distribution of three major mosquito complexes, paleoclimate models, and places where early humans lived in sub-Saharan Africa between 5,000 and 74,000 years ago. The resulting map indicates that people avoided or died out in areas where Plasmodium falciparum-induced malaria, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes, was likely prevalent. "The effects of these choices shaped human demography for the last 74,000 years, and likely much earlier," said Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge. "By fragmenting human societies across the landscape, malaria contributed to the population structure we see today. Climate and physical barriers were not the only forces shaping where human populations could live," she explained. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. For more on the study of ancient illness, go to "Dawn of a Disease."

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TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs; malaria; mosquitoes; olivercromwell; prehistory

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Pools like this in sub-Saharan Zimbabwe are ideal breeding locations for mosquito vectors.

© Martin and Ondrej Pelanek

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Though Spanish Jesuits are often credited with discovering quinine, indigenous communities knew of it long before Europeans arrived [/caption]

In France, quinine was used to cure intermittent fevers of France's King Louis XIV at the court of Versailles. In Rome, the powder was tested by the Pope's private physician and distributed for free by the Jesuit priests to the public. But in Protestant England, the drug was met with some scepticism, as some doctors labelled the Catholic-promoted concoction a "papal poison". Oliver Cromwell allegedly died of malarial complications after refusing "Jesuit Powder". Nevertheless, by 1677, cinchona bark was first listed by the Royal College of Physicians in its London Pharmacopoeia as an official medicine used by English physicians to treat patients.

To fuel their cinchona craze, Europeans hired locals to find the precious "fever tree" in the rainforest, scrape its bark with a machete and take it to cargo ships awaiting in Peruvian ports. Increased demand for cinchona quickly led the Spanish to declare the Andes "the pharmacy of the world", and as Canales explained, the cinchona tree soon become scarce.

The Tree That Changed the World Map
Vittoria Traverso | 28 May 2020

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Ask Rachael Carson.