Geneticists at the Human Origins Institute have sequenced the genome of 9,000-year-old human remains discovered in the Eastern Ghats of India. The analysis, published in The Lancet: Infectious Diseases, reveals the earliest known genetic signature of resistance to Orientia tsutsugamushi, the pathogen responsible for scrub typhus. This adaptation suggests that early Mesolithic populations in the region faced severe evolutionary pressure from tick-borne diseases in dense forest environments.
The study highlights how these ancient populations developed specialized Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) variants to recognize and neutralize the pathogen. The presence of these markers in modern tribal groups in the region confirms a long-term genetic continuity that has persisted for nearly ten millennia.