[C19fan]

I read another article about how West Africans have low copper. Some Westerners tried to treat the Africans by giving them copper supplements. The result was an outbreak of malaria among the treated population. It turned out low cooper was a evolutionary defense against malaria.

[sima_yi]

As the greenery turned to desert,...

... as a result of Global Warming, caused by evil Republicans and their SUV's.

[I want the USA back]

A very natural process. This is how organisms adapt to their environment.

[PGR88]

Bands of hunter-gatherers thrived there, catching fish and spearing hippos.

I doubt anyone was spearing hippos. There probably wasn't a prehistoric weapon which could poke through a hippo's skin unless one was on top of it, and that's gonna be really difficult.

[originalbuckeye]

Hmmmm. The header indicates the WaPo, yet the link says NYT?

[FirstFlaBn]

Never mentioned, but greater resistance to malaria is what made using enslaved Africans in America economically feasible. They lacked scientific knowledge, but the word spread anecdotally that blacks could work in malarial lowlands without getting sick.

This fact, not some moral superiority, explains why slavery didn’t grow in cooler dryer areas.

[editor-surveyor]

.
Why post such total BS here?

Our defense against disease is our inate immune system, which we constantly attempt to destroy by using drugs.

Sickle cell is caused by nutritional deficiencies of the birth parents. Those deficiencies are often geographical.
.

[ro_dreaming]

That’s interesting to me. When I joined the Navy, they pulled me (Caucasian dude) and 3 much darker skinned guys and sent us to medical. They told the four of us that we either have sickle cell anemia, or sickle cell trait (me), and that there going to test me again (ended up testing me 4 times).

All these years later, 3 of my 4 daughters have it as well.