Encyclopedia of Immigrant Health

It is now generally accepted that the human race originated in North East Africa and subsequently spread around the world. Assuming this is true, we are all migrants or the descendants of migrants, with the dubious exceptions of the Berber and Coptic peoples living around the original area. Those first migrants would, of course, have faced considerable risks in what might be termed occupational health hazards and nutritional problems, though their numbers were probably too small to provide a reservoir for most of the infectious diseases that affect modern human communities. There is some slight evidence of cultural differentiation at...