Why Your Blood Type Is Older Than Humanity

A, B, AB or O, positive or negative. Almost everyone knows their blood type, but hardly anyone knows why blood types exist at all. In this video: a deadly transfusion in 1667, the Viennese scientist who cracked the pattern, the Australian man whose blood protected more than two million babies, why you share your blood type with a chimpanzee, how malaria and cholera shaped the map of blood types, what Neanderthal DNA revealed, the blood group that exists in just one person, and whether your blood type really says anything about your personality. 0:00 Intro: the question on every donor form 1:23 What a blood type actually is 3:08 The first transfusions 3:47 Landsteiner discovers the blood groups 5:28 Positive and negative: the Rh factor 6:08 The danger in pregnancy 7:28 The man with the golden arm 8:25 One gene, and why O is a broken version 9:25 Older than our species 10:51 An ancient arms race with disease 11:17 Malaria 12:18 Cholera, norovirus and COVID-19 13:47 The world map of blood types 14:18 Neanderthals and Denisovans 16:23 48 blood group systems 17:06 Gwada negative: compatible only with herself 18:09 Golden blood: Rh null 18:52 Does blood type shape your personality? 20:12 The blood type diet 21:31 The full answer Sources: Landsteiner (1901), Wiener klinische Wochenschrift: agglutination and the ABO groups Landsteiner & Wiener (1940), Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med.: the Rhesus factor Ségurel et al. (2012), PNAS: the ABO blood group is a trans-species polymorphism in primates Rowe et al. (2007), PNAS: blood group O protects against severe malaria through reduced rosetting (Mali) Harris et al. (2005), Clinical Infectious Diseases: blood group, immunity and risk of cholera (Dhaka) Ellinghaus et al. (2020), New England Journal of Medicine: genomewide association study of severe COVID-19 Condemi, Mazières et al. (2021), PLOS ONE: blood groups of Neanderthals and Denisova decrypted International Society of Blood Transfusion (2025): 48th blood group system (Gwada negative, EFS) Nawata (2014), Japanese Journal of Psychology: no relationship between blood type and personality Wang et al. (2014), PLOS ONE: ABO genotype, blood-type diet and cardiometabolic risk factors Australian Red Cross Lifeblood: James Harrison and the anti-D program If you've ever typed a question into a search bar and got a one-line reply that didn't really explain anything, this channel is for you. Subscribe for the next long answer. #bloodtypes #biology #science