The most widespread human malaria parasites are Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. It has been widely assumed that P. falciparum has always infected humans; i.e. our common ancestor with chimpanzees was infected by an ancestor of
P. falciparum, and the parasite later emerged out of Africa with modern Homo sapiens, around 60,000 years ago. In contrast, the closest known relatives of P. vivax have been Plasmodium species infecting monkey species in SE Asia, and the origin of P. vivax has been attributed to cross-species transmission from those monkeys, with subsequent spread out from that Asian hub. We have been examining malaria infections in wild apes, by amplifying DNA sequences of Plasmodium species from a very large number of faecal samples from numerous locations across Central Africa. Phylogenetic analyses of these sequences reveal a number of previously undescribed Plasmodium species. The evolutionary relationships among P. falciparum, P. vivax and these ape parasites overturn the previous consensus views on the origins of both human malaria parasites and provide a new perspective on their phylogeography.