Anthropology 1AA3 Assignment 1
Human Adaptation to Malaria
Widespread disease has been a great cause of rapid mortality rates throughout history. As some diseases vanish or become less prominent in society, cultural and biological anthropologists have been able to conduct research on to how human adaptation and resistance to disease occurs. Based on interconnectedness of aspects such as economy, population distribution, horticulture, environment and anatomy, biological anthropologists and cultural anthropologists are able to draw connections and prove how humans have adapted to malaria over time.
Cultural and biological anthropologists have observed that people from India, Asia, and the Mediterranean have a higher percentage of people with one abnormal hemoglobin allele, compared to in other parts of the world where most people have two normal hemoglobin alleles. It's been found that people with two abnormal hemoglobin alleles carry a disease called sickle cell anemia; this disease is known to be circumstantially fatal. In addition to this finding, there's a direct correlation between the number of people in an area where the sickle cell trait is common and the amount of people with the one abnormal allele that proves to shield the infection of malaria. This single abnormal hemoglobin allele is known as hemoglobin S, Allison (1990) was first to examine that when hemoglobin S is present, people seem to be less resistant and protected against malaria. Her research in The Anthropology of Infectious Disease helps in further understanding the connection between a cultural environment where a certain disease (malaria) is most present, and how biologically people of the surrounding community anatomically adapt to fight off the condition. Natural Selection (Peters-Golden,H. 2010), the idea of how anatomical changes are largely due to favored adaptations for proficiency of survival in a given environment, can further prove why people in areas more prone to sickle cell anemia
Widespread disease has been a great cause of rapid mortality rates throughout history. As some diseases vanish or become less prominent in society, cultural and biological anthropologists have been able to conduct research on to how human adaptation and resistance to disease occurs. Based on interconnectedness of aspects such as economy, population distribution, horticulture, environment and anatomy, biological anthropologists and cultural anthropologists are able to draw connections and prove how humans have adapted to malaria over time.
Cultural and biological anthropologists have observed that people from India, Asia, and the Mediterranean have a higher percentage of people with one abnormal hemoglobin allele, compared to in other parts of the world where most people have two normal hemoglobin alleles. It's been found that people with two abnormal hemoglobin alleles carry a disease called sickle cell anemia; this disease is known to be circumstantially fatal. In addition to this finding, there's a direct correlation between the number of people in an area where the sickle cell trait is common and the amount of people with the one abnormal allele that proves to shield the infection of malaria. This single abnormal hemoglobin allele is known as hemoglobin S, Allison (1990) was first to examine that when hemoglobin S is present, people seem to be less resistant and protected against malaria. Her research in The Anthropology of Infectious Disease helps in further understanding the connection between a cultural environment where a certain disease (malaria) is most present, and how biologically people of the surrounding community anatomically adapt to fight off the condition. Natural Selection (Peters-Golden,H. 2010), the idea of how anatomical changes are largely due to favored adaptations for proficiency of survival in a given environment, can further prove why people in areas more prone to sickle cell anemia