Humans Survived A Covid-19-Like Pandemic 25,000 Years Ago

Jan Bartek - AncientPages.com - Fear, frustration, anger, and sadness are just some of the many emotions we can experience during a pandemic outbreak. How a person handles a pandemic is a psychological question but many of us feel helpless at times, which is understandable.

Yet, we mustn’t forget that pandemics have been with us for as long as we can remember. About 25,000 years ago, humans survived a Covid-19-like pandemic and they did not have the luxury to rely on the medical help we have today.

Humans managed to overcome a Coronavirus-like pandemic 25,000 years ago. Credit: Kovalenko I - Adobe Stock

Australian and American geneticists have studied the spread of ancient viruses and discovered a set of adaptations in the DNA of modern Asians in East Asia. The finding suggests that about 25,000 years ago, mankind survived a virus outbreak similar to coronavirus, now known as Covid-19.

There Have Been Countless Pandemics On Our Planet

“Over the course of the last several million years of evolution, humans likely have been plagued by hundreds or perhaps thousands of epidemics.

Little is known about such ancient epidemics and a deep evolutionary perspective on current pathogenic threats is lacking. The study of past epidemics has typically been limited in temporal scope to recorded history, and in physical scope to pathogens that left sufficient DNA behind, such as Yersinia pestis during the Great Plague.

 Host genomes however offer an indirect way to detect ancient epidemics beyond the current temporal and physical limits. Arms races with pathogens have shaped the genomes of the hosts by driving a large number of adaptations at many genes, and these signals can be used to detect and further characterize ancient epidemics,” scientists write in the paper.

Assistant Professor, David Enard at the University of Arizona has studied how the scars of ancient epidemics have shaped our DNA. These findings can help us to fight future pandemics that will inevitably occur.

In his paper, Professor Enard and his colleagues explain that “the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has emphasized the vulnerability of human populations to novel viral pressures, despite the vast array of epidemiological and biomedical tools now available.

A Coronavirus-Like Pandemic A 25,000 Years Ago In Asia

Notably, modern human genomes contain evolutionary information tracing back tens of thousands of years, which may help identify the viruses that have impacted our ancestors – pointing to which viruses have future pandemic potential.”

Scientists applied evolutionary analyses to human genomic datasets to recover selection events involving tens of human genes that interact with coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which started 25,000 years ago.

These adaptive events were limited to ancestral East Asian populations, the geographical origin of several modern coronavirus epidemics. An arms race with an ancient corona-like virus may thus have taken place in ancestral East Asian populations.

Professor Enard makes an interesting observation saying that survivors of a pandemic are “not superior people, but those with damaged proteins, faulty equipment in their cells that the viruses could not use. Viruses have not helped us to evolve; they have held us back.”

MessageToEagle.com explained in one of its articles that a teaspoon of soil contains more living organisms than there are people on Earth. It’s an amazing yet frightening fact especially since viruses are by far the most numerous biological entities on Earth.

“We are still very, very far from having sampled even a tiny proportion of all the viruses that are out there lurking in different species.”

See also:

2,500-Year-Old Tibetan Medical Text Describes A Coronavirus-Like Outbreak In Surprisingly Accurate Details

Ancient Calendar Predicted The Coronavirus And Other Disasters In 2020 – History Researcher Says

Coronavirus: Advice From The Middle Ages For How To Cope With Self-Isolation

“As we sequence more human genomes and the genomes of other species, we will be able to learn more and more about ancient epidemics, not only in human evolution, but in the evolution of many other species potentially. And this could tell us a lot about which viruses are driven by pandemics in the past and, as a consequence, which viruses we should be suspicious about,” Professor Enard said adding it would be naive to imagine we can somehow avoid future pandemics.

To scientists, it’s therefore vital to focus their efforts on combating the next pandemic. The rest of us must keep a positive attitude no matter how hard life can be during a pandemic.

Written by Jan Bartek - AncientPages.com Staff Writer