We generally think of AIDS as a new disease, first appearing outside of Africa around 1977 and becoming an epidemic in the 1980s.

According to geneticists, however, the virus that causes AIDS has existed in human populations for more than 100 years. A recent biopsy of a sample in the Congo revealed that HIV first appeared in that region around 1900, the same year that Pablo Picasso drew Woman With Cat (right), years before Cubism was even on the artist's mind.

Puts it in perspective, doesn't it?

Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona led the study, which put to rest the previous theory that HIV first appeared around 1930. Chimpanzees did carry the disease before humans, which has been known for decades, but when the virus leaped from one species to another has been hard to determine.

The first recorded instance of a human with AIDS was in 1959, found in a man who was living in what was then the Belgian Congo, and HIV was reportedly found in the tissue of a dead teenager in 1969, in St. Louis. Full-blown AIDS, however, did not appear in the US until 1981. For a relatively complete history of the disease, visit Avert.org.

AIDS affects approximately 33 million people worldwide, the majority of whom live in third-world nations without adequate health care or prevention efforts, such as sex education.

In a related story, Mexican police recovered a stolen "condom mobile," a truck used to promote the government's HIV-AIDS awareness program. Thieves made off with the vehicle's sound system, 5,000 condoms, and a motor used to inflate a 23-foot-long condom balloon.