Meet the hominin species that gave us genital herpes
October 2, 2017
Two herpes simplex viruses infect primates from unknown evolutionary depths. In modern humans these viruses manifest as cold sores (HSV1) and genital herpes (HSV2).
Unlike HSV1, however, the earliest proto-humans did not take HSV2 with them when our ancient lineage split from chimpanzee precursors around 7 million years ago. Humanity dodged the genital herpes bullet - almost.
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-hominin-species-gave-genital-herpes.html
