Anthropological Characteristics

Unlike diseases that require specific behaviors or cultural customs to spread, Smallpox is a proximity based disease that must rely on direct contact of a person with the bodily fluids of an infected person. It is estimated to have diverged from its last common ancestor about 6,000 years ago, coinciding with the appearance of large human settlements and the domestication of livestock (Babkin et al, 2006). With the rise of agriculture and dense human populations, rodents carrying Smallpox’s last common ancestor were attracted to the stores of grains and initiated the evolution of a specialized human specific virus (Pearce-Duvet 2006). The density of human settlements allowed for this more virulent species of host specific virus to spread effectively among populations. By the mid-twentieth century, Smallpox was largely eradicated from modern civilizations due to better health care initiatives and vaccination availability. It continued to proliferate within the third world, primarily sub-Saharan Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and India, because of lack of initiatives and access to modern health care. Extended vaccination would not occur in these areas until 1967 (CDC Smallpox zones, 1955).