A new study claims that ancestors of modern humans from Africa may have spread diseases among Neanderthals, contributing to their extinction.

In a study recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, among the diseases brought to Neanderthals by modern humans are herpes, tapeworms, tuberculosis, and stomach ulcers. The study mentioned that Neanderthals were not ready for those tropical diseases and it was likely that it made severe effect on small groups of Neanderthals as they came into contact with migrating ancient humans.

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“Humans migrating out of Africa would have been a significant reservoir of tropical diseases. For the Neanderthal population of Eurasia, adapted to that geographical infectious disease environment, exposure to new pathogens carried out of Africa may have been catastrophic,” said study co-author Charlotte Houldcroft of the University of Cambridge.

The study also highlighted that Neanderthals and other early humans from Europe and Asia were not able to develop immunity against certain diseases transmitted by modern humans from Africa.

Previous studies suggest that a lot of infectious diseases evolved after the development of agriculture, which allowed humans to crowd together in cities and put them in regular contact with domestic animals.

But the recent studies on infectious disease genomes claimed otherwise. Houldcroft and her fellow researchers studied data from pathogen genomes and the DNA of ancient human bones. According to her team’s findings, some infectious diseases may be thousands of years older than originally thought. It has long been believed that major human diseases began to truly evolve about 8,000 years ago.

In addition, another finding from the study revealed that different so-called “zoonoses” or diseases transmitted from animals to humans may have originated from humans after all.

There are several theories about what happened to Neanderthals, including climate change, but researchers think it was likely a combination of factors.

TagsDisease, Infection, Modern Humans, neanderthals, herpes