Today, there are countless external factors that affect your overall health and well-being. They include things like your environment, stress levels, and overall nutrition. But there's something else playing a part you likely weren't aware of.
Roughly 700 years ago, The Black Plague swept across Europe and nearly wiped out the entire continent. The effects of that epidemic are still being felt today and still have a surprising effect on our overall health and wellness.
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The Black Plague (commonly referred to as "The Black Death") was an epidemic that swept across Europe in the mid-1300s.
Researchers say that as many as 200 million people may have died as a result of plague-related illnesses. It is regarded as one of the deadliest moments in human history.
Scientists studied the remains from 206 ancient skeletons and focussed on a gene called ERAP2. In a nutshell, if a human being alive at the time had the right mutation of ERAP2, they were 40% more likely to survive the plague.
The whole point of this gene is to attempt to chop up invasive microbes and present the fragments to the immune system.
Each parent passes on a copy of the gene to their offspring. Some of them work well at eradicating the risk, while others, unfortunately, do not.
Those children had children, and so on and so forth. As the centuries passed, these mutations became much more common.
In order to confirm the results, a modern-day experiment was conducted using the plague bacterium (Yersinia pestis). it was mixed with human blood samples from those who possessed the helpful gene and others who did not.
"It's like watching 'The Black Death' unfold in a petri-dish — that's eye-opening," said Professor Poinar. Today, those plague-resistant mutations are much more apparent than they were 700 years ago.
Paradoxically, what helped keep our ancestors alive 700 years ago may actually be making us sick today. There are also other historic factors, such as our ancestors mating with Neanderthals, that affect how our bodies respond to diseases, like COVID-19.
However, it is highly unlikely that COVID-19 will affect human evolution in the same way that The Black Plague did.
Evolution works through the passing of genes. Since most elderly people are already past the point of having children, their anti-resistant genes won't be passed on to the subsequent generation.
To date, roughly 6.5 million people have died from COVID-19 worldwide. That number doesn't even equal 3.5% of all those who died during the time of The Black Plague.
