Current Biol. 20: 1283-1289 (2010)

The malignant malaria (Plasmodium falciparum) is distributed throughout the tropics. But where and when did malaria originate? Recent work has suggested that malaria spread with the development of agriculture from the Fertile Crescent, the Middle East some 10 thousand years ago. In this study, we assembled the largest global collection of malaria parasites to date, which were characterised by DNA sequencing. We show that the origin of malaria is much older than agriculture and dates back to the expansion of modern humans (our ancestors) out of Africa some 60-80 thousand years ago.