This is wild stuff! I would be curious which traces other pandemic pathogens like smallpox and influenza have left on us. Edit: of course, other diseases proba

This is wild stuff! I would be curious which traces other pandemic pathogens like smallpox and influenza have left on us. Edit: of course, other diseases probably left their mark on our DNA. But it seems the signal is easiest to detect with diseases that occur in large, sporadic outbreaks that rip through entire populations, thus making overall survival on having protective mutations. Since it is endemic in the Old World since prehistoric times, the changes encouraged by smallpox might be hard to find now. But there are populations in the Americas and Australia who it has been introduced to much more recently...