It is clear that malaria, a disease caused by Plasmodium spp., has burdened humans throughout our evolutionary paths, and remains one of the deadliest maladies to date.Yet, in sharp contrast to the consequence, the human-malaria interaction is a topic that archaeologists do not understand well.This is partially due to the technical difficulties in extracting evidence from archaeological contexts, and partially due to a dearth of interdisciplinary review on this parasitevaluable information is thus veiled by technical as well as linguistic barriers.This review synthesises archaeological, biological, and ecological evidence to explore such interaction on the east side of the Eurasian continentnamely, East, Southeast, and South Asia.Materials at scrutiny involve published genetic analysis on pertinent malaria species, ancient Chinese historical/medical documents, and osteoarchaeological data on relevant skeletal markers.We examine how the evolution of both Plasmodium and humans engaged in this theatre, and highlight the role played by malaria in driving human demographic shifts as https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031182026102042
Li et al. (Wed,) studied this question.