This multi-disciplinary study examines the changing nature and contexts of human contact with great apes and monkeys in equatorial Africa and the health consequences of that contact. The nature of “contact” has been addressed by biomedical researchers, but not by social scientists. We will bring together historical, anthropological, geographic and biological analyses to provide a fuller description of how contact, its nature and significance have changed over time and shaped human health. This social sciences study will insert the complexity and variability of human practice and historical, geographical processes into studies of zoonotic transmission and disease emergence. Focusing on selected diseases that have emerged in part through human-nonhuman primate interactions, our study will offer robust multi-disciplinary, social sciences understanding of past dynamics of disease emergence and insight into present and future ones. We will set the foundation for a metagenomic study of enterotypes shared by humans and great apes -- of paramount interest because these interactions are the ground zero of potential pathogens entering human bodies.