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Timeline of early HIV/AIDS cases

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ7806047 ↗
Source-derived summary

HIV/AIDS was recognised as a novel illness in the early 1980s. An AIDS case is classified as "early" if the death occurred before 5 June 1981, when the AIDS epidemic was formally recognized by medical professionals in the United States.

Virus origins

All known subgroups of HIV-1 and HIV-2 are thought to have entered humans as distinct cross-species transmissions of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) from primates.

SIV exists as distinct lineages that cluster in different species of primates. HIV-1 is most similar to the SIV found in common chimpanzees (SIVcpz) in southeastern Cameroon, giving rise to the notion that HIV-1 emerged from chimpanzees in this area. SIVcpz itself emerged in chimpanzees as the result of a recombination of two separate lineages of SIV known to infect red-capped mangabey, and Cercopithecus species.

Early 20th century

HIV-1 group M (responsible for the global pandemic) is estimated to have emerged in humans around 1920 near Kinshasa, then part of the Belgian Congo. This estimation was the result of time-scaled evolutionary models being applied to modern samples and retrieved early samples of HIV-1 (M). It had previously been estimated from the genetic differences between LEO70 and DRC60 samples and later samples that HIV-1 group M had jumped into humans in 1908 ± 10 years.

1950s

The earliest known sample of HIV-1 is from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (formerly Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Timeline of early HIV/AIDS cases” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Timeline, early and AIDS, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1981, 1920, 1908—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Timeline, early and AIDS is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “open-knowledge reference entry” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7806047. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1920 and 1908.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Timeline of early HIV/AIDS cases” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.