crowd disease

plural crowd diseases

1. A disease that is spread from person to person, with no animal reservoir.

   The crowd diseases could not have existed before the origins of agriculture around 11,000 years ago. Only with the explosive population growth made possible by agriculture did human populations reach the high numbers required to sustain our crowd diseases.

   2013, Jared Diamond, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Crowd diseases, which are among the oldest established infections that humans have endured, emerged in the Old World centers of Mesopotamian civilization (the region now occupied by modern Iraq, eastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey) and India, where settled agricultural and pastoral societies developed.

   2011, Patricia J. Campbell, Aran MacKinnon, Christy R. Stevens, An Introduction to Global Studies, →ISBN, page 190

   While hunter–gatherers had lived in a relatively peaceful relationship with microorganisms, by keeping their own numbers at a level the local environment could sustain, the Neolithic farmers created conditions that would eventually let humans experience and maintain crowd diseases.

   2013, John S. Mackenzie, Martyn Jeggo, Peter Daszak, One Health, →ISBN