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0:00
H. This shirt is way too big. I feel like I'm going through a thing, [music] you know, where you want to change all your clothes. I want to make all mine just a little bit smaller. That's going to go away in like two weeks. What a weird thing about being human. Anyway, on to the video about humans. When you think about the creatures we share our planet with, it's pretty unsettling to imagine if one of those was another human species. Like humans that are kind of like us, but not. Maybe it'd feel
0:21
very uncanny valley, like a timeline that shouldn't exist. But if you've been following along on this series, you'll know that that was the case for most of Hominant history. But now in this episode, you'll come to find out that was also the case for our own species history. For pretty much the entire time that homo sapiens have existed on Earth, we shared the planet with multiple other species of humans. That's weird to think about. That is objectively weird and
0:42
probably makes you have some questions. How were those other humans different from us? What happened when two different human species met each other? Spoiler alert, it was sick and twisted. And until when was this the case? And why? Where did they all go, etc.? Well, today we're going to get into all of that. So without further ado, my name is Lindsay Nicole and this is the evolution of us that we know of. All right, we're going to start off with a little recap. Last episode, the
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biggest name in homminant evolution between about 1 and 2 million years ago was Homo erectus. Very funny name for a very monumental guy. Guy is gender neutral, by the way. Not only did Homo erectus have very similar anatomy to modern humans, it was also the first homminin to leave Africa and spread into Europe and Asia. And on top of that, what I didn't tell you last time, or maybe I did and I don't remember, is it's thought that Homoctus gave rise to most, if not all, later human species.
1:26
That's a big deal. So, let's get into that list. First up, about 700,000 years ago, is Homohyleber. I hate this [ __ ] name. Homohylebergensis. Homohylebergensis. Homo. This should be my little warm-up before I do a video. Homohyleber Homohidlebergensis. There we go. That's like the name of the guy from Breaking Bad, right? Say my name Eisenberg. >> In 1907, miners discovered a fossilized human jawbone near the city of H Highleberg. The next year, the fossil was named Homoh Highensis by a German
1:56
anthropologist named Otto Shutenck. Got it. The suffix encis means from. So, H Highlebergensis means from H Highleberg. At the time, this was the oldest evidence of humans in Europe. Since then, Homohyensis, it's just going to sound like mush. All right? It's just going to sound like mush whenever I say it. It's just going to sound like I'm rolling down a hill. Since then, homohy. Since then, homohadorenses has been found at a [ __ ] ton of sites in Europe and Africa. They possibly have some
2:20
remains in Asia. The species was around like 700,000 to 200,000 years ago. They had quite a lot in common with us. Can I should I just give it a nickname? Walter White. Let's just call it Walter White. No, I don't want to get copyritten or whatever. Harry Heidi. Oh, Hidleberg sounds so masculine. Heidi doesn't really, but maybe that's perfect. Yeah, we're just going to call it Heidi cuz I am sick already of saying that name. Like homoerectus before them, Heidi was
2:45
tall, similar in size to modern humans with a flat face and big round head. They were also crafty people. At the sight of whatever the [ __ ] this is in Germany, remains of this species are found with tools made of wood and stone as well as butchered remains of large animals. Other sites have evidence of hearts where they must have built fires. He also lived at the right time and the right place to be direct ancestors of our species. Based on genetic comparisons between our species and some
3:06
of our ancient relatives, evidence suggests by around 700,000 to 600,000 years ago, Heidi gave rise to three descendant lineages [music] that each went their own way. One lineage settled around Europe and West Asia and gave rise to Neandertols. Another moved into Eastern Asia and became the mysterious Denise. And the third lineage remained in Africa, ultimately transitioning into Homo sapiens, us. If we think of Heidi as the parent of our species, [music] the Neandertols and Denise are siblings.
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I'm going to get to each of them in a bit. Just for now, keep in mind they're [music] are siblings. Heidi is Papa, but there's plenty of debate about the details of this evolutionary transition. Some researchers suggest that the common ancestor of these three lineages might not have been Heidi, but instead homo ancestor, a name given to human remains found in Spain. [music] So, yeah. Uh-oh. Shit's already getting muddy as [ __ ] The story gets even more complicated due
3:50
to some recent research on fossils in China. A skull called Yunan 2, which is about a million years old, has been identified as part of the Denisan lineage. If that's true, it might mean that all three later branches originated way earlier than we thought. possibly not from Heidi, something else. We don't know. Obviously, there is still very intense research and debate here. Scientists are still figuring out the exact timing of everything and relatedness and all that [ __ ] Luckily,
4:10
the picture gets clearer as we go forward in time. The earliest remains of Homo sapiens are about 300,000 years old from Africa. Since then, and for almost that entire time, we shared the planet with both of our sister species, the Enderls and Denise. Like earlier hominins, we can learn about these species from their fossilized remains and the tools and other objects associated with them. But because these hominins are also geologically recent, we also have access to another valuable
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source of information. DNA, we all know DNA has all this stuff lives in our cells, tells the cells how to do cellular [ __ ] in a very detailed manner. So scientists can read DNA to make very detailed interpretations about the organism that DNA belongs to, what they looked like, what they did physiologically, etc. Unfortunately, DNA is fragile as [ __ ] As soon as a cell dies, the DNA begins to break down. Fossils in the millions of years old have pretty much lost all their DNA. But
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fossils in the hundreds of thousands of years or tens of thousands of years, hey, you might get lucky. Thanks to some really wellpreserved fossils and some really incredible genetic sequencing technology, scientists have been able to assemble a good chunk of the genomes of both Neandertos and Denise. Even though they've both been extinct for tens of thousands of years, that ancient DNA gives us a ton of information. The shape of certain genes can give us clues to
5:16
the adaptations of these species. And comparing genetic sequences between different populations can help us interpret how these ancient humans moved around and interacted with each other through time. By comparing DNA between species, we can estimate the timing of when stuff happened evolutionarily. I mentioned that scientists use genetic data to estimate when our ancestors gave [music] rise to later species. They do this using a technique called a molecular clock. DNA changes a lot.
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Changes in the genetic sequence can happen every time a cell divides and every time a parent produces offspring. You have a [ __ ] ton of genetic differences from both your parents. And if you have a kid, they'll have a [ __ ] ton of differences from you. Add up those [ __ ] tons of differences through each generation. Over a long time, they build up enough to lead to the evolution of new species. By combining genetic data with precisely dated fossil remains, scientists can estimate the
5:57
rate of genetic change for various lineages of life. Comparing fossils to other living or extinct relatives, researchers can interpret x amount of change over y amount of time. With that information, we get a molecular clock molecule in question in this case is DNA. If two species are closer related, it means not very long ago, they were the same ancestral species. You and your cousins descended from the same grandparents. [music] And in just those two generations, not a lot of genetic
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changes happened. So you have all relatively similar DNA. In the case of say humans and Neanderls, we can compare genetic sequences and estimate how long it would take for that much genetic differences to arise from a starting point as a single ancestral species. So with our species, Neandertols and Denise, the genetic distance between the three lineages suggested they started diverging around 600,000 [music] and 700,000 years ago. That's a molecular clock estimate. So we have tons of
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information about these ancient humans. We study them using our fossils, their DNA, and also our DNA. Genetically, we have a lot in common with them. Not only because we inherited DNA from the same ancestors, but also because we inherited DNA directly from each other. Most living humans have a little bit of Neanderl and Denisemen inside of their genome. Cuz [ __ ] got weird. And we'll talk about that in a bit. But first, let's meet our ancient sister species. Starting with the one we discovered
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earliest and understand the best. In 1856, 3 years before Charles Darwin published on the origin of species, Cory workers in Germany uncovered a handful of ancient human bones in Feldhopper Cave. A couple years later, Irish geologist William King identified these fossils as a new species of ancient human. He named the species after the place they had been found. The Neander Valley. I like that name. Sounds like meandering. Makes me wonder if Meander Valley is a good place for meandering.
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Based on pictures of it, it looks perfect for meandering. Looks very whimsical. I love a good meander. I'd like to meander in Neander Valley. In German, it's called Neanderl. So, King named the species Homo Neandertolancis. The species became known as the Neanderl Man and eventually just Neanderls. I know the way it's spelled sounds like Neanderthalss. Most people pronounce it that way, but technically it's Neanderthalss. I don't give a [ __ ] how you pronounce it. And so I hope in
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return you don't give a [ __ ] about how I pronounce it. If I say Neanderthal and you think I'm a [ __ ] pompous nerd, just keep it to yourself. If I say Neanderthal and you think I'm unprofessional, keep it to yourself. That sounds a little like I'm actually upset about it. It turned out that those cave fossils weren't the first Neanderthal discoveries. Bones found earlier in the 1800s from like Belgium, Gibralar were eventually identified as Neanderl, too. And Belgium isn't just
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important in this video because of those bones. It's also the country that's home to some really important pets. And my friends at Planet Wild, who I partnered with for today's video, just announced a new mission to protect them. Planet Wild is a 20,000 plus member community that funds monthly projects to protect endangered species, revive forests, and restore ocean ecosystems. They're crowdfunding for nature. Their team travels to the project of the month, documents the work you're helping to
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finance on site, and uploads the footage to their YouTube channel where they tell you exactly what was invested, what was immediately achieved, and what will be the ideal long-term outcome. You might remember I told you about their lion mission in the cat series. And now they're taking on the petlands, the crucial wetland ecosystems that store water, prevent floods, and absorb an insane amount of carbon, like more than all the world's forest combined, even though they only cover 3% of the
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terrestrial world. That is nuts. And like many aspects of our natural world, they need help. 80% of this wetland area in Europe disappeared to make room for farmland. [music] So, Planet Wild teamed up with Eco Tree to restore it. By removing non-native and unwanted trees and vegetation and filling in hundreds of miles of ditches that drain the water from the land, Planet Wild is bringing water and biodiversity back to this crucial ecosystem. And all of this is thanks to
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Planet Wild members who funded this and this time we're even brought out to help on the project. I know for a lot of people being involved with a conservation group seems like a dream with obstacles like full-time jobs, inaccessibility, just life in general. Planet Wild is the perfect solution. No matter how crazy your life gets, you get to be part of real conservation efforts and see the direct impact of your contributions every single [music] month. You can sign up for whatever
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amount feels right for you per month, and that money goes directly to funding their projects. This is positive, important, and hopeful on its own, but it also will feel really good to be part of the reason these projects get done. So, go sign up at the link in the description or scan this QR code >> to get your first month comped by me. Get involved with Real Conservation and see the difference it's making, one project at a time. And if you don't feel like supporting Planet Wild anymore, you
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can cancel at any time. No questions asked. [music] All right, now back to the bones. Since then, the remains of more than 300 Neanderls have been discovered in sites across Europe and Asia, along with a [ __ ] ton of artifacts from like 200,000 years to 40,000 years old. And a lot of these bones had viable ancient DNA. So researchers were able to put together most of the Neanderl genome back in 2010, which is sick. And all of this combined makes Neanderls the best
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studied homminin species aside from us, obviously. In terms of their anatomy, Neandertols are almost identical to us. are actually so similar that a lot of researchers consider them the same species [music] and just a subspecies. So we would be homo sapiens sapiens. They would be homo sapiens neanderlinsis. A bit clunky, a bit warty, and not everybody agrees with that. Personally, I don't prefer it, but that's just me cuz it's longer. So that's a shitty reason anyway. And there
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are some subtle differences. Neanderl skulls are a bit less round and they have an extra-lar nasal cavity. Also prominent ridges above their eyes and no pointy chin. They also have stocky bodies with relatively short limbs and wide hips and torsos kind of built like football players. This is what a football player is built like. And more specifically, they were [music] built like red-headed football players. Genetic studies have identified Neanderl DNA variants similar to those seen in
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modern-day humans with red hair and pale skin. This is probably related to where they lived. Europe is pretty far north, so less direct sunlight than the African habitats where Neanderl's ancestors lived. Pale skin is better at absorbing light, so you can soak up that vitamin D with efficiency. For a long time, scientists suggested Neanderl's bulky builds might have been an adaptation for the cold climates of ice age Europe, but it's a bit more twisted than that. Lots
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of Neanderl fossils have been found in relatively warm places. Other research indicates that Neanderls might have lived particularly difficult lives. Their fossils have a pretty high frequency of bone fractures, which have been compared with injuries seen in professional rodeo riders. Were Neanderls rodeoing perhaps? Or maybe just trying to [ __ ] up some large dangerous animals frequently? maybe trying to do rodeo with large dangerous animals. Who knows? Maybe they're the
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ones to invent rodeo with like a woolly rhino, maybe woolly mammoths. We cannot prove or disprove it for now. But they are sometimes found in association with the remains of large animals. Might have been prey to the Neandertols. For a long time, Neandertols had a reputation of being primitive or stupid. Classic Unabunga idiot caveman. Part of the reason for this was the fact that they're extinct. Early [music] scientists suggested they must have died out because they weren't as smart or
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capable as us and we beat them via slliness and wit. But another reason for that reputation was a lack of information. The more fossils and artifacts we find at Neandertol sites and the better our techniques become for investigating them, the more we learn about the complexities of their lives. And of course, some of it is just straight up racism. Early on, Neanderls were thought to be the ancestors of modern Europeans since it was generally agreed by the white European scientists
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of the time that white Europeans were the highest form of humans. They assumed that Neanderls must have been simple-minded, [music] univilized, the same way they viewed people from non-white places. And of course, they were wrong about pretty much all of that. Neandertols are not our ancestors, but our sister species. Neandertols also weren't primitive cavemen, but human beings with complex cultures and traditions. And it turns out Neandertols actually had bigger brains than we do.
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On average, the Neanderl brain case is a little bit bigger than that of modern humans. That doesn't necessarily mean that they were more intelligent, but it is a nice little [ __ ] you to throw in the face of those outdated ideas. [music] Evidence of Neanderl intelligence comes in part from their tools. Stone tools are associated with many Neanderl sites. They represent an upgrade from what came before. Earlier hominin tools were made by chipping off pieces of rock until the remaining rock
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core was the right shape for the job in question. The Neanderls used what's called the Lavalwa technique. [music] They would carve a rock into the right shape and deliver a final blow that broke off a flake that was the perfect size and shape to be a tool. Both techniques involved chipping off pieces of rock. But the earlier method discarded the rock chips [music] and use the remaining core as a tool. This new Lvala method creates flakes to be the tools [music] leaving behind the rock
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core. It is the opposite. It is the same but opposite. So, it is not the same. This technique allows for the creation of tools with more precise and refined shapes to [music] be used as knives or sphere points. It's also really hard to do. One of the ways that modern archaeologists study ancient tools is with actualistic [music] studies, which means they try it themselves. Actually, a friend of mine does this if you want to see some cool content of it. His name
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is David Ian Hack, ethnosinology on YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok. He specifically studies the relationship between ancient humans and their dogs, [music] which is sick and he makes great content about it. He also has a lecture on the history of dogs which I will link in the description. But anyway, plenty of archaeologists have experienced using this Lavalwa technique and the consensus is that it takes a lot of skill and planning. Neandertols were making some
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of the most sophisticated tools in the world. But they weren't the only ones. Similar tools are known from ancient Homo sapiens sites too, but isn't clear whether both species came up with this technique independently or if one learned it from each other. Neanderl tools included knives and spear points that they used for hunting and butchering prey. But it wasn't just big game. Evidence at sites and chemical analysis of Neanderl teeth show they were eating tons of plants and seafood
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as well. There's a recent study that described the footprints of some Neanderls, probably one adult and two children. They were walking back and forth along the beach, probably collecting shellfish or other aquatic resources, maybe some specimens to examine, who knows? So, they had spears and knives, but also scrapers and alls. Some of these were just used for hunting and cutting up large prey animals. Others might have been used for things like sewing, fashioning clothing from
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animal huts. That's what alls are used for, by the way. and never heard of an all before making this video. So yeah, an all is good for making holes in Fortus. So the more you know. Other research found that the surface of Neanderl tools sometimes has trace amounts of pitch, which is a sticky substance that can be made from plant material. Seems like they might have used it as glue, maybe to stick spear points to handles, gluing other things together. Who knows what kinds of things
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they glued together. And on top of stone, they also used bone and plant material to make tools. Those are harder to find and identify, especially plants, as you can imagine. In human cultures today, wooden tools, ropes, other plant tissue items are very common, but those obviously don't preserve well. They're quite compostable. We can say almost for certain that Neanderls and other ancient humans used plant-based tools. Clearly, they were very sophisticated, capable of
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crafting complex and refined objects using a variety of resources. And this wasn't just for shelter, finding food, practical purposes. Neanderls were also artistic. At one cave site in Slovenia, Neanderl remains include the bone of a cave bear that was carved into the shape reminiscent of a flute. Recent research, including actualistic studies where scientists carve their own version of the thing, suggest it might have been used as a musical instrument, which is
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sick. Other sites have things kind of like small beads and pendants made of shells and teeth, sometimes with notches or piercings in them for attaching to some other jewelry or something else. One site in Croatia had a bunch of eagle talons that were found and polished and cut to be part of a necklace or a bracelet. And then a lot of sites had natural pigments like ochre where they were apparently mixed and used to add color to other artifacts. All of these skills were part of the ways that
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Neandertols expressed themselves. Seems like they had music and jewelry and they communicated through it and had complex relationships with each other because of it just like we do today. Imagine being a little Neanderl and the shell necklace you got from your mom breaks. What do you do? Got to go to that one person who can fix it. That's a very human kind of story and it's very possible matter of fact almost certain that Neanderls experienced things just like that. For a
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long time the idea of Neandertols being artistic was very controversial. Again part of that is because of how difficult it is to find convincing evidence. Some of it was just wanting to keep to the unabunga mentality Neandertos must have had. This was really pushing pressure against that unabunga mentality. But obviously they were making art and it seems like they might have been doing it before our species did. At a cave in Spain, red and black paintings on the
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wall include hand stencils and animal drawings dating back to 64,000 years old. That's way before homo sapiens join Neanderls in the region. And it's also the oldest known cave art by like 20,000 years. Neandertols are also the earliest known human species to bury their dead. At multiple sites, Neandertol skeletons have been found in shallow graves, apparently laid to rest in an intentional or ritualistic manner. In some cases, the graves are associated with nearby animal bones that might
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represent objects of importance that were buried along with the bodies, but up for debate, but worth mentioning anyway. Homo sapiens came from Africa. Neandertols were in Europe and Asia, as I said. [music] So, even though the two species lived on Earth at the same time, they weren't always in the same place. But eventually, our ancestors spread out. By 50,000 years ago, maybe much earlier, homo sapiens and Neandertols were sharing the same part of the world.
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Easy to imagine that a meeting between them would have ended in violence considering our species history [music] with our own species. While it's totally possible there was conflict, we don't have any direct evidence that these two species got nasty with each other. [music] We do, however, have plenty of evidence that our species got nasty with each other. Most modern humans have Neanderl DNA. If you're a person with European or Asian descent, between 1 and 4% of your genome is probably made of
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Neanderl genes. These are specific Neanderl genes, not shared genes with our common ancestor. Specific Neanderl genes. How? Like I said in the last quiz, when in doubt, the answer is bang. The genetic codes of humans living in ancient show tons of evidence that the two lineages were banging. Exactly when, how often, under what circumstances, we don't know. But we do know vaguely it happened frequently and consistently enough to make a lasting impact on our DNA. At a site called Skull Cave, Skull
18:39
with Pizzazz. skull cave. Ancient hommin graves contain fossils that seem to have a mixture of traits from both modern humans and Neandertols. Since the remains are about 140,000 years old, some researchers have interpreted these as hybrids, like full-on 50% 50/50 hybrids. The oldest known evidence of the two species banging. Pretty hard to confirm without genetic evidence. [music] So, a lot of scientists are not down with this scenario. But if they are actually hybrids, that means Neandertols
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and humans, modern humans, homo sapiens, have been banging for at least a 100,000 years now. Now, I can already hear some of you asking, "If Homo sapiens and Neanderls were able to reproduce together, doesn't that mean they were the same species?" Not necessarily. Cuz like we talked about in an earlier episode, species definitions objectively suck. The most common definition of a species is the biological species concept. Says that if two animals can produce viable offspring, they are the
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same species. [music] So then yes, we and thes would be the same species. While this definition works pretty well on a broad scale, as always, as we know already, nature never gives [ __ ] to you straight. It's full of exceptions. It doesn't naturally put things into boxes for our brains to understand. Only we do that to organize reality, but tons of animals can produce hybrid offspring. Don't even get me started on plants. In the fossil record, species are more
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commonly identified based on their anatomical traits anyway, since we can rarely tell who was banging who in a viable way. So, this history of hybridization doesn't prove that modern humans and Neanderls are the same species, but it does tell us that our two lineages remains genetically very similar for a very long time. Considering how like we are in our genes, our physical appearance, even our cultural behavior, it's kind of unsurprising that we formed families
20:09
together. But this story of ancient human relations isn't complete without the mysterious third lineage. Our second sister species that we didn't even know about until like 15 years ago, the Denise events. In 2008, Russian archaeologists found fossil bone fragments in a cave in South Central Siberia. The cave is known as Dennisova Cave, named after a hermit who lived there in the 1700s whose name was Dennis. The fossils included a single finger bone that was identified as an
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ancient homminid [music] between like 50,000 and 70,000 years old. Obviously, there's not much we can tell from a single tiny bone. [music] So, researchers got a DNA sample hoping to figure out which species it belonged to. In 2010, they announced that the DNA of this bone did not belong to Homo sapiens or to Neandertols, but to a third mystery lineage, which became known as Denise or Dennisovven. I've heard both like the Neanderl Neanderthal thing. I like [music] Denise. It's kind of more
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jumpy, you know. Dennisovven is a little, you know, for many years this lineage was known almost exclusively from DNA. A handful of other fossils like teeth and skull fragments have been identified as Denise at sites across Eastern Asia from like 200,000 to 30,000 years old. Comparing [music] these DNA samples with modern humans in Neanderls, scientists were not only able to confirm the existence of a third lineage, but also confirmed that Denise too left genetic remnants in our genomes. More
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banging. Certain populations of modern people like Tibetans, Melanesians, Aboriginal Australians have genomes made up of 3 to 5% Denisin DNA. A lot of these Denisan genes seem to be related to life in cold climates or high altitudes. Genetic variants that help regulate the body's response to low oxygen, metabolizing fat stores, fighting off infections. It's possible that some modern populations like the people of Tibet are able to live in challenging environments partially
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because of the genes they inherited from Denise ancestors. All three lineages show evidence of interbreeding with each other in regions where they over overlapped. As it happens, Dennisova cave is one of those places. Remains of homo sapiens, Neandertols, and Denise are all known from there, but not all at the same time. So, most of the evidence of crosslineage mating is genetic [ __ ] But one of the bones found at Dennisova Cave is a first generation hybrid.
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You've heard of Denny from the block. Now, let me introduce you to Denny from The Rock. Just like us, Denny got half a genome each from a mother and a father. And just like us, each parent left its genetic signature in Denny's chromosomes. Denny's father was a Neanderl and Denny's mother was a Denise. That's insane. Both extinct. What a shame, but insane nonetheless that we found a fully half-and- half hybrid in the [ __ ] fossil record. It's also just one tiny example of all
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the ways our ancestors were complete freaks with our sister species back in the day. A study from 2025 found that Native Americans carry a Denisven gene couched [music] within a sequence of Neanderl genes. That means the Neanderls picked up a Denisven gene and then Native American ancestors picked up that chunk of the Neanderl genome. So, it's like a Russian nesting doll of inner species freak behavior. Quick sidebar, you might be wondering why we find so many ancient remains of humans in caves.
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Why were our ancestors cavemen? Well, it's not that the caves are the [music] only places people were living. It's more like a combination of two main factors. One, caves are a good place to find shelter during [ __ ] weather, and they definitely made use of them when they found them. You probably would, too. Two, caves are a great place for preserving fossils. They're enclosed spaces, usually very little outside influence, [music] protected from the elements, consistent temperature,
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humidity year round. So, ancient people weren't cavemen, but they did occasionally leave their bones behind in some very convenient locations for us to eventually find them in caves. Since the initial discovery of Denise, scientists have been frustrated, yes, but also fascinated by the fact that we know so much about this lineage, but we have no idea what they looked like. Initially, Denise bins didn't even receive a proper species name cuz there wasn't enough fossil [ __ ] to identify physical
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features. But that changed in 2021. Researchers described a fossil skull from China as [music] a new species named Homo Longi, also known as Dragon Man, dating to at least 146,000 years old. In 2025, genetic analysis revealed that Dragon Man's [music] DNA is, you guessed it, Denise. This is a big deal. First off, it gives us a first look at a Denise's face, or at least a skull. Second, it allows scientists to determine the anatomical features of the Denisven lineage to compare it with
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other fossils now, even ones that don't preserve DNA. And third, it means Denisven finally might get a scientific name. If this evidence holds up, all this is solid and good [music] to go, then Denise would officially become Homolongi. But I think everybody's going to keep calling them Denisven. All because of a hermit named Dennis that lived in the cave in the 1700s. Pretty sick. For hundreds of thousands of years, these three human species made their homes all over the Eastern
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Hemisphere in Africa, Europe, and Asia. They crafted tools, wore jewelry, made art, buried their dead, and occasionally met up and banked. But they're not the only ancient humans we shared the planet with, and some of them are very unusual. In 2003, a team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists discovered a nearly complete human skeleton in Leanging Boa Cave on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The bones were around 80,000 years old and very small, belonging to a person that was just 3
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and 1/2 ft tall. The next year, this tiny human had a scientific name, Homo Floresenses, but they also became known as the Hobbit people. Since then, several more individuals have been found in that cave, all between 100,000 and 50,000 years old. Other hominin remains in other parts of the island go back at least as far as 700,000 years, and they were tiny the whole time. There's even stone tools from the island that are properly sized for this species smaller
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hands. Not only are the Hobbit people small in stature, they also had a pretty small brain case, too. And with these features, they kind of look like early species of homo, even earlier. Because of these traits, a lot of scientists initially wondered if this wasn't even a new species, but instead ancient [music] humans with some sort of physical condition that made them small. A ton of different studies compared homophoresensis remains to modern humans with various conditions like microphily,
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iodine deficiency, and down syndrome. But the bones of the hobbit people don't actually show most of the features associated with those conditions. The bones also have consistent anatomical traits beyond their size that set them apart from other human species. So, they really were just a species of tiny people. But why they were teeny is an open question. There are two main hypotheses. First, island rule. The form of island evolution that I've talked about before, specifically with the
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Hobbit people. Island rule is nature's way of saying [ __ ] around and find out. [ __ ] gets weird on islands. This is a very common thing. Species on islands tend to end up being significantly larger or smaller than their relatives on the nearby mainland. And Flores is a great example of this. Today, the island is home to the Flores giant rats, which are about the size of rabbits. There also used to be pygmy elephants that were only about as tall as a modern
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human. So like here that's tiny. Exactly why this happens is complicated. Seems to be related to the change in environmental pressures. Fewer resources means big species tend to get small to save energy and [music] space. Fewer predators means big species don't have as much of a reason to be gigantic. And tiny species can get a little bigger without being [ __ ] chowed down. So it's possible that the hobbit people were just a human example of evolutionary island dwarfism. Some
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researchers think this lineage split from another Asian homminin species, possibly Homo erectus about a million years ago. became small and stayed that way on flores. Another hypothesis is that homo flororesiansis is a direct descendant of earlier hominin species. Osteolipthesines and homohabilis were similarly small in stature and had smaller brain cases. Could be that homo floresensis was a late surviving lineage that held on to those earlier features. If that's true, it would mean that this
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lineage of small island dwelling humans was just hanging [music] out doing their thing for nearly the entire time our homogeneous has been evolving and producing species like us. So people who like this hypothesis think homophoresis shouldn't even be considered part of our genus. Might be more accurate to call it oripythecus floresiansis or something. But people who don't like the hypothesis point out that none of these earlier hominins is known to have ever left
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Africa. So since the hobbit people are only known from this Indonesian island, the simplest explanation is that it evolved from other Asian hominins. So that would be homoctus or something similar. And even more sick is they're not the only unusual homin and recently discovered to have lived alongside our ancestors. In 2013, a pair of cavers were exploring the tunnels of the rising star [music] cave system in South Africa. There they came across some human remains and alerted South African
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paleo anthropologists Pedro Boschoff and Lee Burgerer. The cave contained a large assemblage of homminant fossils that would eventually be identified as a new species. But there was a catch. The cave was very tight. In some places, the passages were as little as 7 in wide. So Burger put out a call on Facebook to assemble a team of small, skinny people to help excavate these fossils. The team ended up being six women who called themselves the underground astronauts.
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In late 2013, the seam excavated more than 1,500 fossils in what has been called the most badass paleontology story of the century by me. I'm calling it that. This is badass. The remains belonged to 15 different individuals, making this the largest collection of a single hominin species from any site in Africa. And in 2015, Burger and colleagues named a new species, Homo Nleti. The word Nleti means star in the Soo language, referring to the rising star cave system. The species dates
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between 330,000 and 230,000 years ago, around the same time of the earliest homo sapiens, and its anatomy is quite surprising. Komai is very similar to modern humans in some ways, the anatomy of the wrists and legs. But the species is also relatively small, under 5t tall, so I still clear it with a pretty small brain case. Their fingers are even curved like earlier tree climbing hominins. Not much is known about their diet, but the shape of their teeth suggests they ate tough plant material.
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This is also supported by patterns of damage on the teeth from chopping on hard foods. That's another thing they have in common with earlier hominins like oustralipiththeysines. This combination of features has made scientists very confused about the relationships of this species. Like homophoresensis, it might have been a recent branch of homo that evolved a very different lifestyle for some reason. Or it might be a member of a long branch of descendants from earlier
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species. Their culture is also mysterious. No stone tools associated, but the shape of their hands and wrists similar enough to modern humans that they probably could handle tools. Then there's the question of how the [ __ ] they got in the cave. Because their resting place is so difficult to get to. Some researchers have suggested the bones couldn't have been deposited there by natural processes. Instead, they think they intentionally placed their dead there as a burial ritual. If true,
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this would be the oldest known deliberate hominin burial by far. But not all scientists agree. Some think the evidence for this is very minimal, so much more research to be done. Obviously, there's still a lot of questions to be answered about these ancient species, but it's pretty clear that no fewer than four human species lived alongside our homo sapiens ancestors all across the eastern hemisphere. They were numerous, very diverse. It was a world full of humans of different shapes, sizes, and
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cultures. The long tradition of multiple homminin species sharing the planet continued up until just tens of thousands of years ago. Which brings us to the big question. What happened? Why are we the only ones left? After millions of years of homminin diversity, why did all of our sisters and cousins disappear? The last 100,000 years or so were a pretty tough time for a lot of species, especially for larger animals. The famous late megaponal extinction saw the decline of mammoths, ground sloths,
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[music] saber-tooth cats, a lot of the iconic ice age creatures. Research into the cause of these extinctions tends to bring up two options. Changing climates and us. During this time period, there were a lot of fluctuations in the climate. Warm became cold, [music] wet became dry, back and forth, back and forth, and so on. This put a lot of stress on [ __ ] everybody. At the same time, humans, especially homo sapiens, were spreading farther and wider across the landscape, setting fires, hunting
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large animals. Generally speaking, both of these factors probably led to the demise all of the late plyosene extinctions. Paleontologists go back and forth on which factors were more influential like all the time. It's a gradient all over the world. Different things affecting different things, but it's generally those two things. And it's not just that we hunt and destroy everything, but between hunting, harvesting plants, introducing species like rats, our presence often ends up
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ruining the local ecosystem. The Hobbit people disappear from the fossil record like 50,000 years ago, which is also the same time homo sapiens spread across Southeast Asia and into Australia. That doesn't mean it's our fault that they're gone. It could just be that the environmental changes that allowed our species to expand were bad for them, but doesn't look great for us. Then the Neanderthalss disappeared like 40,000 years ago. That's kind of weird. They were very successful, capable [music]
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humans. It's possible the changing environment did them in the youngest Neanderthal remains are from 28,000 years ago in the southernmost parts of Europe. Seems as though the extinctions went down north to south in the most extreme north into the less extreme south. [music] if they were losing resources like large game probably was hard for them to keep up with hunting and keeping everybody alive or it was us. The dramatic version of this idea is that our violent homo sapiens
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predecessors wiped out the Neandertols with spears and [ __ ] But we know our two species had families relationships together. So probably not that straightforward. Could be that our species simply out competed Neandertols with environmental change creating limited resources. Modern humans might have been Neandertols to the best food sources and shelters. Maybe we were better suited for harsh times. Maybe we had better communication between populations. Patterns of tools and beads
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across archaeological sites indicate that there might have been a good amount of trading between modern human populations. This might have allowed us to survive in a difficult climate. Neandertols, on the other hand, seem to have been more separate and isolated towards the end of the ice age. This isolation might have led to a lack of cultural and genetic diversity that left them vulnerable. Or maybe it was all of the above. Probably was all of the above, cuz nothing's ever that straight.
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Whatever the combination of reasons, the last Neanderls disappeared less than 30,000 years ago in a shrinking corner of Europe. Looks like Denise disappeared around the same time, but we [music] have so little information about them that it's [ __ ] impossible to say. By the time the last major glacial period of the ice age ended about 20,000 years ago, homo sapiens were the only hominins left. For the first [music] time in the history of the lineage, there was only
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one hominin species on Earth. But obviously, in a way, Neandertols and aren't completely gone. Some of their genetic legacy lives on in us. Some living human populations might be better off thanks to the genes they inherited from our ancient relatives. In the wake of that last glacial period and the plyosene megaponal extinctions, our species went on to develop agriculture, begin metal working, establish permanent settlements at river deltas that would give rise to the first pockets of
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civilization and eventually to develop the scientific tools that would allow us to get to know our lost sisters. We'll talk about our own evolution or I guess our cultural evolution in the next episode. So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss it. In the meantime, you can keep up with behind the scenes content, live streams, Discord server on Patreon. And for now, stay curious. The world has a lot for us to learn. [music] See you.
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