A new paper does just that. George Dvorsky summarizes:
The specific virus used for the new study, which was conducted by Curtis Brandt and Aaron Kolb of UW-Madison, is the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) which typically causes nothing more than cold sores around the mouth. It’s not lethal, but it’s incredibly virulent. It tends to run in families owing to the manner of infection, which can include simple contact like kissing or through saliva. It’s been such a part of the human story that Brandt refers to herpes as “a kind of external genome.”
For the study, the researchers compared 31 strains of HSV-1 collected in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. Then, by mapping the mutation patterns of the virus, they were able to reconstruct the way herpes hitchhiked on humans as they traversed around the globe. By using high-capacity genetic sequencing and advanced bioinformatics, the researchers were able to parse through the massive amount of data embedded within the 31 discrete genomic strains.
Joshua Keating adds:
In general, the paper suggests that the data “supports the “out of Africa model” of human migration with HSV-1 traveling and diversifying with its human host”. There was one North American derived strain which they found was related to the East Asian family of the virus. They estimated the “divergence time” between this strain and its relatives as around 15,000 years which corresponds “with the estimated time period in which the North American continent was populated from Asia, approximately 15,000 years BP.”
In other words, the first arrivals on the North American continent may have brought their cold sores with them.
The Dish 