[Where do the parasites of man come from?]

The Hominids have come in contact, over the last few million years, with the infective stages of many parasites which had up to then evolved in non Primate hosts; this is because Hominids have occupied multiple environments and acquired diversified behaviour. The high number of these lateral transfers explains the multiplicity of current human parasitic diseases whereas their youth on an evolutionary scale accounts for the seriousness of most of these diseases. The basic questions arising from the exceptional opportunities offered to parasites by the evolution of the human lineage concern: the precise role played by human behaviour, the mechanisms of alterations in specificity, the identity of the original host phyla, the dynamic and genetic consequences for parasites, the relationship with the evolutionary history of the ancestors of Homo sapiens sapiens; for instance, it is suggested that man's mastery of fire, allowing him to cook his food, dramatically reduced his contamination by certain parasites and that this contributed to the subsequent success of Hominids.