If you go back 30 years, many people at that time had a very common parasite - lice. Through fossil research, researchers found that as early as the Cretaceous period more than 100 million years ago, lice have appeared, and they have accompanied the evolution of earth's organisms, and they have constantly changed their hosts, until later after the emergence of humans, began to parasitize humans.
Although we collectively call "lice", but in fact, lice are also divided into many species, due to the different positions of parasitism in the human body, divided into: head lice, body lice and pubic lice, in short, that is, parasitized on the human head, body and private parts, then, once very common lice, now why suddenly disappeared?
Studies believe that early lice were mainly parasitic on birds, and then when mammals developed rapidly, lice also began to move towards mammals, and after the emergence of primates, it also accompanied the evolution of primates, gradually spread to human ancestors, and followed the evolution of human beings for millions of years.
In the process of studying lice, scientists have also found a very interesting question: the lice in modern humans are from two different populations, they should not have appeared together, but now they are concentrated in modern humans, so what does this mean?
With the deepening of research, in the end, scientists believe that the reason why different lice appear on modern humans is mainly due to the interbreeding between ancient humans of different human races in the process of early human evolution.
After all, in the process of human evolution, human beings are not independent evolution, but there are multiple branches of human races in early human beings, and there are more than 20 kinds of human races known at present, and in this process, along with the spread of early humans, different human races have also carried out genetic fusion, which is the so-called "hybridization".
Therefore, although in the end only Homo sapiens laughed to the end, the modern humans who evolved from Homo sapiens are not "pure-blood", but have a small amount of DNA from other ancient species, and at the same time, inherit the parasite obtained from other ancient species - different lice.
In fact, a very important reason is that because the living standard has become better now, people are paying more attention to personal hygiene, so that bathing and changing clothes are very diligent, naturally, lice have lost the breeding ground, and they have slowly disappeared.
You know, in the past, people bathing was a more troublesome thing, because there were not bathing facilities at home, and bathing either needed to go to the bathhouse, or it was to boil hot water at home with a large wooden barrel, or a large basin for simple cleaning.
But it costs money to go to the bathhouse to take a bath, and the simple cleaning at home also makes people feel that it is a waste of water (which will increase the water bill), so many people only take a bath once a month, and the clothes are not changed frequently, naturally, lice have always existed in the past, and at that time, everyone had lice on their bodies, and people did not feel that there was anything wrong, and even some people also liked to "catch lice" and take pleasure in it.
For the young generation such as the post-90s and post-00s, lice are an absolute rarity for them, after all, when they were born, all aspects of life were constantly getting better, which was completely different from the past.
So, are there still lice in people now? Speaking of which, lice are not completely extinct now, in some remote areas, because of the limited standard of living, if people do not bathe and change clothes for a long time, there will still be lice, but this is a very rare situation.
Take Africa, for example, we all know that most of Africa is very poor and backward, in these places, people's hygiene habits are also very bad, especially many Africans are very fond of "braiding dirty braids", and do not wash their heads once a month, naturally, now people have more serious lice parasitism, that is, those poor and backward areas of Africa.
Therefore, if you want to avoid the terrible parasite of lice on your body, then, the best way is actually to pay attention to personal hygiene, develop good hygiene habits, bathe frequently, change clothes, only in this way will the lice have nowhere to hide, and at the same time, you can also make the lice disappear completely from the human world as soon as possible.
Of course, although the situation of lice parasitism in humans today has been much less, other mammals will still be parasitic by lice, especially the pet dogs and pet cats we raise, so if we raise pets, we also need to bathe and clean the pets at home frequently to ensure that there will be no lice on their bodies, otherwise, the lice on the animals may also come to the human body.