The invention of farming brought humans and animals much closer and humans probably developed stronger immune systems to ﬁght infections from the animals. But the change to humans’ immune systems may not be as big as scientists thought – tests on the hunter-gatherer’s DNA found that he already had genes that made his immune system strong. Some of these genes still exist in modern Europeans today. “Before we started this work, I had some ideas of what we were going to ﬁnd,” said Carles Lalueza-Fox, who led the study at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona. “Most of those ideas turned out to be completely wrong.”
What did the DNA test reveal about human immune systems?
Humans had strong immune systems even before they started farming Genes can affect the immune system Modern Europeans have relatively weak immune systems Since the time of the hunter-gatherers, immune systems have been dependent on a healthy diet