Malaria led to speedy evolution on island off African coast
Researchers have uncovered recent traces of adaptation to malaria in the DNA of people from Cabo Verde, an island nation off the African coast. An archipelago of 10 islands in the Atlantic Ocean some 385 miles offshore from Senegal, Cabo Verde was uninhabited until the mid-1400s, when it was colonized by Portuguese sailors who brought enslaved Africans with them and forced them to work the land. The development of malaria resistance in Cabo Verde took only 500 years. “That is the blink of an eye on the scale of evolutionary time,” The Africans who were forcibly brought to Cabo Verde carri...
Source: futurity.org
