Kuru Selection: Extinction as Contingency

The Capture

The Fore people experienced a prion epidemic (kuru) killing ~2,700 people 1955-1970. The epidemic killed PRNP codon 129 Met/Met and Val/Val homozygotes. Met/Val heterozygotes survived. This created selection pressure within a single generation — evolution compressed from thousands of years into decades. More resonant: what if Neanderthals lacked the heterozygote resistance genotype and were eliminated by a prion epidemic ~40,000 years ago rather than outcompeted by humans? This rewrites human dominance as not superior technology or cognition, but lucky genetic variation against an invisible pathogen.

The Live Wire

First wire: A prion epidemic creates rapid genetic selection within one generation.
Second wire: Extinction events — including Neanderthal extinction — might be driven by pathogenic selection rather than competition or climate.
Third wire (uncomfortable): The survival of any population is contingent on genetic variations we cannot predict in advance. Humans survived kuru because of a random codon polymorphism. Neanderthals might have died because they lacked it. Evolution is not about the "fittest"; it's about who had the right random mutation when the pathogen arrived.

The Connection It Makes

Adjacent domain — history: Arctic Exploration Failure and Adaptation. The Europeans failed not from lack of knowledge but lacking genetic and cultural adaptations the Inuit had. Success and failure turn on contingent variations.
Adjacent domain — history: Demographic Collapse Parsi. The Parsi face extinction not from outcompetition but from coupling of failing systems. The selection pressure is cultural, not genetic, but the mechanism is identical: a population without requisite variation cannot respond to environmental change.

What It Could Become

Open question: How many extinction events in the paleoanthropological record were driven by pathogenic selection rather than climate or competition? Does the fossil record preserve evidence?

Concept extension: Create "Contingency and Extinction" page showing how Neanderthal case, kuru selection, and Parsi collapse all operate on the same principle: extinction occurs when a population lacks the variation to respond to environmental pressure (pathogenic, cultural, ecological).

Promotion Criteria

A second source touches this independently
Has survived two sessions of thinking without weakening
The Live Wire second framing holds — contingency-based extinction
Has a falsifiable core claim: extinction may be driven by pathogenic selection