Believe it or not, 3.7 billion people have herpes. Most get it through harmless interactions, like sharing a spoon or kissing a baby, and are entirely unaware. After all, it’s usually dormant, and for most people, it only causes periodic cold sores.
Despite its prevalence, scientists still argue about when herpes first infected humans. Some argue that it followed us as we left Africa, but others propose a more recent origin when cities began to boom. In a new study, scientists sequenced the first four herpes genomes from dead corpses. They concluded that modern strains of the virus date back to the Bronze Age, around the time when — you guessed it — people began kissing.
“Something happened around five thousand years ago that allowed one strain of herpes to overtake all others,” says co-author Christiana Scheib of the University of Cambridge in a press release.
The team screened 3,000 ...
