How God has been protecting us throughout history

'Humans migrating out of Africa would have been a significant reservoir of tropical diseases.'

The Bible holds a lot of wisdom. An excellent example of wisdom can be found in the Old Testament, when God warns against eating foods and animals that are to be considered "unclean."

It was not until thousands of years later that nutritional scientists discovered why God didn't want his people eating such foods - in those days, they bred disease, illness and more.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Now, with help from science and historians, it seems even monogamy was created to protect humanity.

Researchers from Cambridge and Oxford Brookes universities were able to identify infectious tropical diseases in Homo sapiens after they interacted and mated with hominins.

In a report published Sunday in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, researchers suggested Neanderthals had no immunities for the infectious diseases brought by migrating tribes.

One of the study's authors, Dr. Charlotte Houldcroft, wrote: "Humans migrating our of Africa would have been a significant reservoir of tropical diseases. For the Neanderthal population of Eurasia, adapted to that geographical infectious disease environment, exposure to new pathogens carried out of Africa may have been catastrophic."

In a study conducted by the University of Waterloo and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, published in journal Nature Communications, ancient communities that did not practice monogamy often fell prey to outbreaks of STIs.

The study discovered STIs in large polygynous communities, diseases such as chlamydia and gonorrhea were endemic and left the population limited to couples who only mated with each other.

Though all researchers agree the shift to monogamy may have been influenced by several other factors, co-writer Chris Bauch stated, "I don't think it affects our hypothesis because our hypothesis and mechanism concern general trends."

So, knowing how easily sexually transmitted diseases and infections can harm a community, can we say the sanctity of marriage - and the promise of living together faithfully to one man or one woman - God's way of keeping us safe? Probably.

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