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13 - ‘The predators within’: investigating the relationship between malaria and health in the prehistoric Pacific Islands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2009

By
Hallie R. Buckley
Edited by
Marc Oxenham  and
Nancy Tayles
Hallie R. Buckley
Affiliation:
University of Otago Dunedin New Zealand
Marc Oxenham
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
Nancy Tayles
Affiliation:
University of Otago, New Zealand
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Summary

Introduction

The success of human settlement in tropical environments was undoubtedly influenced by the presence of infectious disease. Of the tropical diseases, malaria has caused more human suffering and death than any other infectious disease (Bloland et al. 1998). Considering the continued onslaught of malaria, despite intensive medical treatment and research, the cost to prehistoric populations must have been profound. The Pacific Islands provide an invaluable opportunity for examining the potential effects of malaria on prehistoric populations by the variable endemicity among western island groups and its complete absence east of Vanuatu.

Human settlement of the western Pacific Islands has been very long. Yet, despite the development of agriculture in the Holocene, populations in Near Oceania remained small and technological advancement was limited. (Near and Remote Oceania define geographical regions in the southwest Pacific Islands (Green, 1997) that have distinct ecological and geological influences on prehistoric human settlement (Fig. 13.1).) This is a markedly different pattern from the demographic shift seen in other regions of the world where agriculture was developed. Based on epidemiological, entomological and archaeological evidence, Groube (1993, p. 166) suggested that economic development and population increase in Near Oceania was retarded compared with Asian contemporaries because of ‘…the role in Sahuland prehistory of the “predators within”, the parasites of infectious diseases, particularly the presence in Melanesia, and probably northern Australia as well, of that most ancient of human-specific diseases, malaria.’

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Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia , pp. 309 - 332
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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