Pfeiffer Susan
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 19 Ursula Franklin Street, Toronto, M5S 2S2 Canada.
Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Afr Archaeol Rev. 2020;37(3):487-490. doi: 10.1007/s10437-020-09405-7. Epub 2020 Aug 25.
It is clear from their natural histories that various kinds of diseases would have affected African communities in the distant past. Climatic factors may have reduced the impact of plague-like epidemics across much of the continent. Because of the link between environment and disease vectors, the presence of a disease may have been a stimulus for some group movements in the African past. Evidence of the direct effects of diseases on human populations is generally elusive. Paleopathologists can identify some endemic diseases, but evidence from Africa is sparse. Paleogenomics research can also identify some (not all) endemic and epidemic disease vectors. Recent African aDNA discoveries of inherited resistance to endemic diseases suggest that future paleogenomic research may help us learn much more about the impact of diseases on the African past.
从它们的自然史来看，很明显在遥远的过去，各种疾病就已经影响着非洲社群。气候因素可能降低了类似鼠疫的流行病在非洲大部分地区的影响。由于环境与病媒之间的联系，疾病的存在可能在过去曾刺激了非洲一些群体的迁移。疾病对人类种群直接影响的证据通常难以寻觅。古病理学家能够识别一些地方病，但来自非洲的证据稀少。古基因组学研究也能够识别一些（并非全部）地方病和流行病的病媒。近期非洲古代DNA研究发现了对地方病的遗传抗性，这表明未来的古基因组学研究可能有助于我们更多地了解疾病对非洲过去的影响。
