ANTH 572G - Human Migration & Disease

Credits: Variable

Our species currently exceeds 7,000,000,000 individuals distributed on six continents and nearly every island of the tropical and temperate oceans. The human range expansion began approximately 60,000 years ago while our population size began its exponential increase within the last 10,000 years with the advent of agriculture and more recently petroleum based industrial farming. Currently an estimated 1,000,000 people move permanently across international borders each year while 1,000,000 travelers cross international borders each day. Prehistoric migrations and colonialism formed the basis for the current distributions of genes, languages, and cultures while the modern large-scale movements of people and goods are contributing to the global dispersal of pathogens, the evolution of drug resistance, and the complex interactions between health care professionals and the increasingly diverse cultures and gene pools of the populations they serve. Occasional.