I'm preparing for my Western Civilization classes next semester. I'm thinking of using the CCR5Δ32/Black Death/HIV immunity hypothesis as an example of ancient history is more relevant than you might think. (While there is some serious controversy about whether the increase in the CCR5Δ32 mutation was caused by the Black Death, or some earlier horrible disease that burned through Europe, it is at least still a valid hypothesis, not yet disproved.)
So I'm reading an article from the Croatian Medical Journal: "Historic, Demographic, and
Genetic Evidence for Increased Population Frequencies of CCR5Δ32 Mutation in Croatian Island Isolates after Lethal 15th Century Epidemics." The English isn't perfect--there are a few typos here and there ("heard" where they meant "herd," for example)--but I did get a very good laugh on this, where they discuss these islands on the Dalmatian coast:
We included 10 villages from these 5 islands into the study. The selected villages were included in the research program (“10 001 Dalmatians”) on genetic regulation of biological quantitative traits distribution in isolated human populations (19,20,33-35).
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