The Other Humans: Why We Survived?

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We are used to sharing our planet with millions of other species. But only one human species has survived. Homo sapiens. Modern humans. Us. Now this wasn't always the case. Amen. Early in our story, tens of thousands of years ago, we lived alongside several other species of humans, relatives who shared our world, who evolved alongside us. Sometimes competing, sometimes coexisting, and ultimately suffering extinction. like the Neanderthals in Europe and the Denisovans in Asia.

Amen. Human evolution is less like a family tree and more like a tangled web, with new discoveries revealing more about this every year. Welcome to the ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, And this is the story of the early humans who once shared our world. Our guest is the paleoanthropologist, presenter, comedian and author Ella al-Shamahi. Ella's new tour, Becoming Human, continues in the UK on the 28th of May. Amen. Ella, it is great to have you back on the show.

شكرا جزيلا جزيلا جزيلا جزيلا It was a lot of fun. And today we're kind of doing a a tour of our extinct human relatives, archaic human relatives. Those extinct people. Yeah. The archaics. But but okay, but explaining that if we went back a hundred thousand years, it wasn't just us, it wasn't just Homo sapiens, there was a whole range of different humans that lived on the earth.

I cannot get my head round how the public have not fully been introduced to this concept until very, very recently. I kind of had a real fun with this, should we say, for the series Human and in my tour actually as well, because I explain it to people is this is pretty much the only time in human history where one species of human has walked this earth. We're alone today. But we never used to be alone.

We are the main species in our minds at least on this planet. We are the only human. Nobody comes close in terms of this, that, and the other, or so we think. And actually what's happening right now is incredibly unusual. We previously were a a regional species, and there were lots of other human species who were kind of also regional species, and there were lots of us. And I often say it was a lot like Lord of the Rings. And there's a big question as to how many species there were.

And a lot of us think that the number that we have right now is the tip of the iceberg. A uh I you know, I'm sorry, I I think you you can easily argue that this is the golden age of paleoanthropology. And that that number will keep growing. I mean, we keep finding species like it's it I don't even I can't comprehend how m how big the family tree has got since I became a paleoanthropologist, you know. So

Well like when I was like eighteen and now I'm you know forty-two, um like the the extent to which the family tree has expanded is shocking. Absolutely shocking. Like they found one hobbit species. We thought that was quite impressive. Now think the they think they've found two hobbit species. Yeah. The family tree just keeps expanding.

Two words just to kick it off. Indonesian islands. How exciting, right, in the future. As you say, tip of the iceberg. How many more species we'll find, even just from that one area?

Yeah. Okay, so basically twenty odd years ago, they discovered a new species of human. They called it Homo Floresiensis,'cause it was found on the island of Flores. It was absolutely shocking. I remember, you know, I was so young at the time and just being like, what?

They've done what? And it was basically I mean, to the point where when they found this skull, they assumed it was a child because it was so small. And then they realized anatomically, no, that's an adult. And it it was so controversial. that there were like shouting matches in anthropology conferences.

Because there was people kind of understandably being like one fossil does not a species mate. You can't find one fossil that's unusual. And you know, it could it could be microcephaly, it could be dwarfism, it could be this, it could be that. You can't just be claiming this crazy thing, which is and for those of you who are kind of not familiar or as familiar with the fields.

This is a species with a brain the size of the brain of chimpanzees, a brain the size of like an orange or a grapefruit. It's not really supposed to be a human brain that is capable of making stone tools. potentially manipulating fire. It doesn't make sense. It's not the way we thought humans were defined. And yet here we are with a species that by the way is probably comes up to my hip. So it's probably the size of a four year old.

or as one of my friends said recently, the size of a penguin which is perfect. On an island called Flores, with giant Komodo dragons, giant rats, um, giant carnivorous flesh eating marabou stalks that are taller than me.

And these miniature elephant-like creatures, the relatives of elephants, they're called stegodons. And on this island they were so small that they were the size of cows. And and there's a reason why we say it was like Lord of the Rings. Like, you know what I mean? This is a fantastical world. It's kind of bonkers.

And yeah, when the team first found this skull, they j like, yeah, people couldn't believe it. It it took a really long time to convince some people. It was basically when they started finding more of these fossils, you know. hundreds of thousands of years apart, they were like, Okay, that's not microcephaly, that's not dwarfism. That's a species. But then they went and found on an island in the Philippines what looks like a second hobbit species.

And at this point you're like I th this is why a lot of us are just like this is the tip of the iceberg. And this is the thing I want to start with that because I said tip of the iceberg, imagine how many Indonesian islands there are. I always think of Sulawesi, you know, that what a What a jewel in the crown for archaeology and paleoarchaeology that they could well be coming out of there in the coming years and you know what other species they may well find that live down there.

It's yeah, Sulawesi. I mean, right now there's the oldest figurative art that we know of in the world is from Sulawesi. It's absolutely incredible. Some people think it's actually not art that we made. Some people actually think it's Denisvans made that art. There's a wild boar there as well. Uh it's like a that's the first figure to write. Yeah.

It's it's w it's you know, it's wild. It's um yeah, it's it's an absolutely incredible thing. And I think it's so hard for us to get our heads round. But I I think for me, the The thing that I'm I'm really keen for people to kind of understand is that this was a world of many, and now we're the only ones left. And in that world of many, they were the specialists, they were the experienced ones, they were the ones that were really well adapted.

We weren't. We were the new kid on the block. And it wasn't like we were the new kid on the block and we were exceptional and like, you know, we turned up and it was written in the stars. You know, it was it was obvious that we were gonna inherit the earth, so to speak. There was none of that. We We were pretty average to start off with.

But the classic image you get, isn't it and I think you can actually even see it on the ancient logo if you look closely enough. is the image, first off you have a chimp, then you have someone slightly bigger and then bigger and then almost a hunched over and then stuff. And it's like kind of it one species after another and you slowly get less ape like and more like a modern human.

And this idea that one species came after the other and then they just got more and more advanced as time goes on. We gotta throw that in the bin, don't we? Yeah, so that is called the March of Progress, or a lot of people just know it as the descent of man image. I always argue that I have two problems with that particular image. Um, the first is that there are no women on it. Yeah.

And it's not that I I I love men, it it's not that. I uh often to my detriment, let me tell you. But it's not that, it's the Of all the things in the world, that is the one thing that men were not doing on their own, like appropriating. Like, you know, and you're just like, come on, guys. And then the second issue that I have with that particular image is that it gives the impression that evolution is linear.

that species A goes to species B, species A disappears, goes extinct. And it's just not the case. In fact, human evolution now we understand is is like some kind of a crazy crazy arse bush tree. Like it's just this thing that nobody really understands. And we're actually having massive debates about is that even a species? Well we don't know. Maybe it's a hybrid. Maybe it's this maybe it's that you know and and nobody can even agree on what a species is.

Is that a can of worms we can tackle? What is a spaceship? Yeah, and I think it's worth doing that because I I think it confuses a lot of people and if it makes you feel any better, all the lovely listeners out there and and and viewers. Join the club. None of us know what a species is. But I think th there's a reason for that. So basically, we were taught at school the biological species concept.

That whole idea that, you know, a mule basically, so a so a horse and a donkey get together, uh the offspring they have offspring, but the offspring is infertile. That is a biological species concept. That is

one of over 20 species concepts. So once you get to university and you're studying taxonomy and and um and and speciation, you realize that actually biologists can't agree on what a species is. And that's why there are so many different species concepts. And the truth is Species don't really exist. It is just a

You know, we are trying to put borders and definitions and parameters on nature. Nature knows no parameters and borders, right? And so it's a useful tool, but we should understand it for what it is, which is pretty lucid. Because we have covered in our last chat. The clear evidence Neanderthals and humans had sex.

But I think as we'll we'll explore other figures like the denisophons today, there's also evidence of interbreeding, Neandstil, Denisophans, Denisophans, Hemos sapiens as well. Yeah. And so that is where it does start getting it really blurs the lines, doesn't it?

Yeah, it really, really does. And it's it's interesting'cause I think a lot of people now know about the Neanderthal interbreeding with us because a lot of people have done their DNA and they know that they've got, you know, a a little bit of Neanderthal DNA in them.

But I think there's this really interesting narrative that's come up. Um God, I even heard Neil deGrasse Tyson the other day saying, Oh, well, you know, Africans are God, I'm paraphrasing him, but it was something like oh Africans are the are the purer Homo sapiens because those outside of Africa have interbred with these other species of human. And the funny thing is i that's actually incorrect because not only do we know that

the there is a little bit of Neanderthal DNA in sub Saharan Africans just because of back migration. And what I mean by that is that um yes, the interbreeding happened outside of Africa in all likelihood, but some people kind of went back into Africa.

But, and this is a really important thing, a lot of us were looking at this going, there's a lot of human species and we keep finding new human species. And there is this thing where we seem to constantly just be having sex with each other. So and a lot of us were like, We think there was probably interbreeding with in sub-Saharan Africa with an ancient species. And shockingly, a team actually uncovered that some modern-day West Africans have a signature of what we call a ghost linen.

So a ghost lineage is when you're you're analysing DNA and you can see a very clear intrusion or what we call introgression of foreign DNA. into the genome that does not belong to sapiens, it belongs to somebody else.

but they don't have the source material. With the Andoth, they have the source material, right? With the anthors we've got the Anthal genome. With Denisovins we've got a Denisovin genome. We've got few of them, right? But we just don't have Whoever this ghost lineage is, so I think it's Europa and a few others um from West Africa, there is a signature of an ancient species who

And we're like, what do you think? Yeah. So um some of the guys behind Naledi, the discovery of Homo Naledi, some of those guys are like, Oh, maybe it's Naledi,'cause Naledi is in South Africa, but it could be Heidelbergensis. We know there was Heidelbergenses still in Africa at that time. Or it could be another species we don't even know about. But yeah, so even even if you are from sub Saharan Africa, you will possibly have some alien DNA in you like the rest of us.

Well, I think this is a fun time then to start a meet the team or or meet the tour. Or meet the family or a quick tour of humanity. Who's your favourite then? Go on.

My favorite is the one we're starting with. Because it feels like the granddaddy, you know, the most successful species of all time, Homo erectus. I'm a rectus. I mean what a record. Almost two million years it was on this earth. it it is really, really impressive and it I think it's such a diverse species. It's both geographically diverse because they existed all over the old world. By the time we turned up, certainly by around 300,000 years ago, we think they were really only in the Far East.

And they were so different as you would expect, I guess, that some people actually think they're two species. So some people think it's Homo erectus and then there's Homo ergasta who are the African version of them. I think these days most of us are like, just it's probably just all Homo erectus. Isn't the first species of Homo, but I think the species that came before Erectus, you could argue some of them were still in the trees. This good old tabala.

Yeah. Like habilist is a big discussion about what's habilist. only on two legs or were they sometimes in the trees? It's you get to Erectus. Erectus was a biped and and was really only a biped. Obviously making stone tools, but so was habilis, to be fair. And some of the species before then. the first species that we know of to leave Africa, although people need to stop discovering stuff because

'Cause there's been a few suggestions of stuff, but let's just not focus on that at all in the last few weeks, shall we say. But yeah, let's still early days on that stuff. So yeah, the first species of hominin that we think of or that we think has left Africa is incredibly successful. And and so I think that's also, you know, that descent of man image that you mentioned, the march of progress.

You've got to imagine that that basically means that the species like three species ago on that line is still around at the same time as us, which is part of the reason why that image just doesn't work anymore. Yeah. But it is such is it controversial to say that I prefer Hermorectus to Neandertals? I mean I'm surprised by that, I think. What how come? with you.

I like as an outsider in, first of all, I always like bucking the trend. Yeah. Um, but we did an interview a couple of years ago with John McNabb from Southampton University. Yeah. And what I remember, hopefully they got the video footage showing it. He sold you on it, didn't he? But he he took out the hand axe. And he said, The fact that you find this tool, whether it's in Southeast Asia or Africa or whatever.

Homo erectus had the cognitive ability that they knew how to create this pretty difficult object, unlike the older Annolumekri tools from previous humans. And they could then pass it down through generations. Yeah. And then he was saying he's like, this was the mobile phone of like the time. But but like that technological leap that you associated and having that hand axe tool and And you just the the whole time period and the geographic extent of them. Yeah.

It really you know, and it doesn't it. I I think the thing with Homo Rectus Bless it also, I think for a lot of the public, obviously they just remember the friends joke. Um which which I get and it is really funny and obviously from the Latin erectus just means erect and it is kind of I get the funniness of it. I think that is part of the reason, but that's why they quite haven't quite had their due. But I I think The problem with erectus is probably that they're so old.

that we don't have as much kind of granular detail on them like we have with the Neanderthals or some of the later species. And so we kind of have a lot of certain like interesting anatomical quirks and we kind of know that they were probably manipulating fire. But we just don't have the stories. And part of the reason you don't have the stories is just'cause you kind of

You need better resolution to have stories. Like with Neanderthals, you we we've got just insane resolution at this point. Just cause you know what it's like. The the fossil record kind of gets worse and worse and worse the deeper in. After civil war, regicide, and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same.

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Well let's move on to the next one I've got which is It seems to be the bit more disputed one, but Homo hydrogen. I used to think homohydrogen. I used to think there we go. If that makes anyone feel any better, even I can't say it. Homohydrobogenes. I used to just feel very comfortable with, basically. I was like, great, Homo Hadamagensis is is the um common ancestor of us and the Neanderthals, everybody go home.

we were just kind of conveniently ignoring that it was quite an inconsistent species. Do you know what I mean? It just seemed like a like a dumping ground. For a lot of other species, or for a lot of fossils that didn't necessarily make sense. It felt more like a time period, if I'm to be honest, than an actual cohesive species. What what time period roughly was it associated with?

So I mean to be fair, they call it the muddle in the middle. Which it kind of middle Paleolithic just just I mean obviously there are other species in that period as well, but it's just it's kind of I mean technically even more recently than three hundred thousand years, they were around, but obviously

for a few hundred thousand years. Well, how many hundred I guess it depends where you judge it from. But like four hundred thousand years, yes, I think five hundred thousand years is like it's yeah, it's that muddle in the middle where everybody just goes, we don't know what to do with it.

And then increasingly I often refer to Chris Stringer, Professor Chris Stringer, desperately try to use him on all of our projects as our main consultant. And um it was interesting actually because we shot we started shooting human. And I was using the term heidelbergensis, knowing that he wasn't a hundred percent okay with it. And um it went to him and he was like, guys, you just gotta dump it now.

He goes he goes, You gotta be careful'cause he goes it's just the way you're using it, he goes, just be careful because it's not 'Cause I wasn't just referring to it as like, put my head up against this species, I was referring to it in the ancestral, our common ancestor, our likely common ancestor with the Anderthals. And being that he's w was one of the people that was kind of putting that forward that forward that theory, the fact that he was kind of going

like, rethink it. We actually went back and re edited a scene so that I was no longer saying that'cause we just thought we'd like this show to be scientifically kind of relevant for at least two years. So yeah, so Hylubagensis is something, whether it's one species or several, it will probably end up being one or two species. And the common ancestor between uh look Neanderthals, Denisovans, and us We still don't really know. No, no. No idea. Okay. Yeah, no clue at this point.

Should we talk about Denisvan? Yeah. Yeah, come on, because they deserve time in the spotlight as well, don't they? So so set the scene, Denisovan's whereabouts we thinking in the world. Okay. Guys, done an e you must have done an episode on Denisivans.

Kind of. Okay. And it involves Tibet and the hand prints up in the Tibetan Peninsula. The Tibetan plateau. Okay. Yeah, which I'm sure we'll So yeah, so I think the thing the the reason why a lot of us feel incredibly excited about Denisovans is not just that we now call them Dragon Man as well, which just come on But it's that it it was the holy grail of paleoanthropology. You know, I remember articles being written actually calling it the holy grail of paleoanthropology, and that's because.

Similar to the Hobbit, it was completely unexpected. So you've got to imagine 20 years ago, even 15 years ago, we thought we kind of knew the landscape, and then we realized we really didn't know much. And sorry, the landscape was generally like Homo sapiens in Africa, Neanderthal's in Europe, Homo erectus in I mean, we were still kind of debating if homorectism right and the dates because I will say the dates in in the Far East are

very controversial. So I would say 20 years ago people were open to it, but we weren't as confident as we are today. So then what happened was the incredible team at the Max Planck Institute, uh that's where Svante Pabba, who won the no uh Nobel Prize for sequencing the Andethol genome, along with other things, I guess.

Um he um his team were basically trying to extract Neanthal DNA off like anything they could find, basically at this point. Um a tiny little fingerbone, it was absolutely tiny, was found in a cave in Siberia in Russia called the Nisova cave. They crushed it up. They were like, Great, let's get some the adible DNA out of it.

And they actually extracted some Neanderthal DNA only upon examination. It wasn't a Neanderthal, but it was human, but it wasn't Homo sapiens, and it was just explosive, because they had realized they had accidentally stumbled upon a whole new human species. And it was bonkers because they had they got to the point very, very quickly where they had the whole genome of this sequ of this species sequenced to really high resolution.

And yet had no idea what the species looked like. So a and that, I cannot express this enough, has never happened before and is not generally the way one does this kind of thing. Usually you find a fossil and then you spend forever trying to extract its DNA, right?

That's what they're doing with a hobbit, for example, and that's what they're doing with hominoledi. They're desperately trying to extract DNA'cause it would kinda be handy to know exactly where these these fellas fell. Fellas and Ladettes, I should say. And as they were yeah, as they were looking at this DNA, they were like, Okay, so we've we've effectively now in a position where we have

the species DNA sequenced. We now know as a result, all these things, for example, they they realize that they were really closely related to the Neanderthals, to the point where some paleoanthropologists would actually argue that they're Asian Neanderthals. They realize that they were incredibly closely related to us. They realize that Tibetans have mutations

that are very unique, that mean that the mechanism by which they are able to live at high altitude is different to the mechanism that other people living today are able to live at high altitude. It's a completely different mechanism. And that mechanism is from Denisivus. I love that. And it's actually the best case that we have of really positive introgression into our genome that's very easy to explain.

And then another team actually went and found these well, they were actually sequencing these tiny little shards of bone from that same cave, Denisova cave. And um they were what you call undiagnostic bone. And for for the archaeologists listening, you kind of know what undiagnostic bone is. It's where on an archaeological site or in an archaeological site,

In an assemblage, sometimes you find these little bits of shards of bone and you're like, well, that could be human, that could be cavebear, that could be a bird. We've got no idea. You bag them because you always have hope as an archaeologist that somebody will invent this incredible technology that will tell you what it is.

But mostly those just stay in bags in museums or like at these sites and, you know, they're just labeled. But they started going through them. It was actually, I think, a PhD student and she went through it and she realized she was using this incredible technology called Zoom MS and she realized that actually it was human and then they sent it for DNA testing.

Turned out it was a girl who they nicknamed Denny, and she was half Neanderthal, half Denisobin. So they were at the point where they had a hybrid that found a hybrid, like nobody could e found a hybrid of anything before, of any human species. They found a hybrid and they still had no idea what the species looked like.

And that's why people were saying it's the holy grail of paleoanthropology. We need to know what this species looks like. And there was lots of whispers, like loads of people were like, We think a lot of the Eastern material, a lot of the material in the far. is the Nisovan and it's mislabeled. Is this where we get the name the the legendary name Dragon Man?

Well, Okay. You would think because there's a lot of uh a lot of human material in that area does get called dragon this and dragon that and just as a side like this is completely side shoot here, but it's just a fascinating detail. it was sometimes ground up, some of those teeth that are ancient human teeth were sometimes ground up for Chinese medicine and they were referred to as uh as dragon teeth and what have you. So it's just just a fascinating kind of um little detail. But anyway.

The story goes that in China during World War II, when it was Japanese-occupied, that a gentleman had found this skull. It was quite a big skull, the Harbin skull. We call it the Harbin skull. And he got concerned because the place was Japanese occupied. So he hid it at the bottom of the well. And then on his deathbed, he told his kids about it. So 2021, just before then they I think they gave it to some scientists.

And the scientists analyzed it and they were like, That is a big skull. Like it's a big skull. Like it looks bigger than a Neantothop suddenly looks bigger than us. And they basically were like, That's a new species. And they called it Dragon Man, basically. They called it Dragon Man. Now, there's two des details about this that I th think are really funny. One is that uh that wonderful story about the bottom of a well. Yeah, it's great.

Like some people are like, Mm, we think it was a bit more suspect than that and that was like a cover up story. Um the other thing is it's worth saying that they had found a bit of Tibetan jawbone that they realized was Denisovan a few years earlier and they did the DNA and they were like, So they've got but it wasn't, you know, a full skull. So So people are looking at this full kind of dragon man homo longi thing going, Oh come on.

What if that's the face of the Denisovans? And then just this summer they did the DNA analysis and it came back as indeed the face of the Disovans. But how long has it just taken me to tell that story? That is the mystery of the Denisovans. But it's great. Like that. You did the story of the justice though, because it's the same time that I'm tired. I need a break. Do you know what I mean? Like Stop now. Right.

But that's how amazing it is. Like that's the kind of like hundreds of incredible academics putting work in to unwrap a mystery that is like, you know, almost two decades old. I mean that story and then you see the replicas of that skull today. I mean actually we have done an episode with Chris on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And first of all the replica skull, which is green, which I like is hilarious. Yeah, it's'cause it's he's what was that in a three D uh? Yeah, I think it's a good

Uh three D printer. Yeah. Yeah, but but it but it's incredible and it gives you the size of the cranium. Yeah. The fact that that's that new story, the link to Tibet today and explain why they can live at such high altitudes with this species as well. And yes, you normally you think, you know, big skulls or you'll think of like the Neandertals, but actually then you've got the Denisovan cousins as well with even bigger ones. So it's just it's it's fascinating and and it's developing. Ja, 100%.

We did cover the Neanderthals quite a lot in our last episode. But of course they are in the picture some a hundred thousand years ago as well. And at that time, although they've still be they've been around for a long time by them, but they're still doing incredibly well, aren't they? They are they are they're an incredibly successful species.

they were hanging on in Europe and in Central Asia, um, in climates where we weren't surviving, you know, we'd have to leg it out of there or or we were becoming locally extinct. We're never 100% sure if we migrated um out of there because it got too difficult, we just disappeared.

But yeah, we couldn't make it there. But it's kind of funny in the context of all these other species, in some ways the Neanderthals are the most demure. Do you know what I mean? It's it Partly I think because so many paleanthropologists

Europe is our backyard. So we have ended up digging here and people know the landscape and and and you know, there's there's obviously the history of paleanthropology started, I guess, a bit more in Europe. I mean it was also happening in Africa, obviously, as well.

But it it helps explain, you know, there's some fascinating stuff going on in the Far East that we're only just starting to understand. And part of that is what you would call bias. Like it's it not in a an intentional way. I just mean like that's where the researchers are. You know? And also quite frankly, the interest is there for a popular audience. If you say Neanderthal on the podcast today, there is a lot of interest in the Western world straight away because of that recognition.

Absolutely. But what's really interesting right now is in the Far East, people are also really interested in human origins. Good, good. But also partly that's because there's this narrative that maybe humanity started from here. Right. Yeah, yeah. But that's what we always do. Like we always I I know this to be very common, like wherever you find something it's like, ah, therefore they m humanity must have started. Yeah.

Well shall we now go back to Africa and a country that even has a place called the Cradle of Humankind? But I don't think this was found at that location, but it was nearby, wasn't it? The species you mentioned earlier. Fascinating one. Ready? Yes. You mentioned how when the Hobbit was discovered, a lot of Disbelief when that was found. Same thing with homonylitic.

Yeah, so Homo Naledi was found by two like amateur cavers. They were amateur cavers at the time, they've become a lot more professional since then. And they basically stumbled upon Hey, wild because it is in a place where there are so many human fossils. It's actually I I believe it's actually part of it was already part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. The cradle of the Human kind. Um they found another one of the humankind basically and they found like a bunch of fossils.

They took it to Professor Lee Berger, who's based out there, um and was based at Witz uh University, and they basically I think they teamed up National Geographic as well and they basically started this massive excavation project that also had this um quite kind of full on media component. And they they did a number of things. One is that it isn't quite revolutionary actually. They opened up the fossils to everyone.

I think it's fair to say the biggest criticism of our field is that we hold on to fossils like they're a treasure that nobody else is allowed to touch within the field. It's a real problem.

I think there are serious ethical issues with it because it basically means that some of the most famous, most important fossils in our history, which I would think should be owned by all of us, or at least we should all have scientific access to of some kind, are behind lock and key, and nobody can get to other than the researcher that's found them and one or two people that they allow.

What the team behind the LED's Discovery did is they basically completely opened it up. They were like, it's open. You wanna come research? We're gonna make a straightforward feed. And part of the reason though why they did that is i is yes, they're kind of revolutionary in their thinking, but also it's because they had so many. They had so many fossils that I think they wanted help understanding what on earth they were looking at. You've got to understand they f they were found in this cave.

And this cave system is quite difficult to get to. And there's not much else in there. So if it was a If it was, for example, mm, because, let's say, a flood or a bear or some kind of carnival was taking homonyledaine, this human species in, you would expect them to also be taking other food or if it was a flood, you would expect other bones, other animals to also it's pretty much just homonology.

It's very difficult to give an interpretation to that other than burial, that they were intentionally to like put there basically by their peers. But this Hermiledi is a tiny species, not not as small as as the hobbit, but small. And they've got small brains. And and traditionally we have been told, and we understand, that burial You know, I mean, we see animals mourn for other animals. You've you've we've all seen videos of of elephants and, you know, really kind of incredible behaviours.

But burial isn't just a an emotional behavi be it's it's a behavior at a different level. Like you know when you you think about what burial is, yes, they might not believe in an afterlife. I'm not saying that. But peril is not something that is associated with a small brain. And you've got them doing very well. And a lot of us now just think that's very it was really controversial when it first came out, but I think we're at the point where it's like It does look like berry.

I remember that. I remember that there were lots of people there was a lot of pushback at the start saying, We just need more proof. We need to analyze the d but and this that's the beauty of as time goes on and having that scientific technology it's like yeah, it looks pretty, pretty clear.

Hundred thousand years old or or Yeah, I mean so so basically a hundred thousand, uh I mean it depends how you look at it, but certainly around three hundred thousand they were still around, probably still there was probably still around a hundred thousand as we as well, if I remember the last estimate. It's the same time as modern humans in Africa and all.

Yeah, yeah. A nice little bit of overlap. Um I can't remember when exactly they ended. Uh I should probably check that. But yeah. But certainly three hundred thousand years when we were there, they were they were around. Yeah. After Civil War, Regicide, and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same.

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Some of the other big species. So I th th it's kinda useful to think about this for a second. So you've got us obviously, you've got the Neanderthals, you've got the Denisobins, you've got Homo erectus, you've got Homo hydrobogenesis, even though we're not hundred percent sure if it's a true species, but there's something going on there. You've got homona Ledi. Yep. Did I already say the Hobbit? No. We mentioned it earlier, ho homo fluisiensis.

You've got the second what we think hobbit-like species, Homo lezonensis. So you're looking at eight human species that were contemporaneous with. The magnificent eight. But here's the really, really interesting thing. If that ghost lineage that is in those West Africans is not Lanedi and it's not Heidelbergensis, that means that there were nine species. At least. Contemporaneous. At least. At least at the time. And once again, so that ghost species is the one that could be our ancestor?

So in West Africans some populations of West Africans, there is a signature of an ancient species. that introgressed, that kind of um uh its its DNA kind of came into ours, our Homo sapien DNA, its alien DNA, but we call it a ghost lineage because we don't have the source. So if

Like with the Neanderthal DNA in us, we know it's two percent, but we would never call that ghost lineage'cause we know the source of it. Or as we call it a ghost'cause we're like, Ooh, we have no idea who you are Like, why you show yourself. If you take nothing away from today, viewers and listeners, can I just suggest it's the term ghost lineages? But I mean that is is very, very cool. We've covered everything from Ghost Lineages to Dragon Man. Yeah. Uh and more. High five. Yes.

I've got asked I if there was at least eight or nine lineages at that well species a hundred thousand years ago. We talked in the last episode about, you know, larger genetic variation, bigger groups, Homo sapiens, how they can beat than the Anstals ultimately and they go extinct. But with all the others, is it just quite a big element of luck? Were we lucky that we ended up being the the people on top at the end?

I think there's a little bit of luck, but I don't think it was just luck. I just don't it I don't see how it could have just been luck. I think I've said this to you before, but I think if you put like a hundred paleanthropologists in a room, we would all disagree on exactly what it is. But I think it's fair to say all of those other species were incredibly successful, had been around a lot longer than us. And now they're obviously not here.

I think for each of those species there were a number of factors involved, and the factors could be slightly different. So for example, it is hard to argue that the hobbit Homo Floresiensis was not affected by volcanic eruptions. Like It does look like um there was basically like continuous volcanic occ activity that seemed quite intense. But I think a lot of paleanthropologists consider us to be the final nail in the coffin.

And I think what's happening there is that we have, in my opinion, we have a brain that is primed. Yeah. be incredibly cooperative. We are hyper, hyper social. And by that, I mean we bond a lot as a species. I know people really struggle with that because they see us as this like warmongering species. And I'm not saying we're not, trust me. I'm just saying, and this is dark, but war technically is cooperation. It's just cooperation with your species against another species.

And by nature we are incredibly, incredibly so you might not realize it, but music, dancing, ritual, they're all behaviours which are a lot of us would argue very inbuilt into us, that are the they're Primarily for bonding purposes, they really help bonding. There's some fascinating experiments on this.

There's like, oh God, there's a silent disco experiment. There's like all kinds of experiments where they show that people really bond. Like people even report um higher pain thresholds after dancing with complete strangers in a synchronized manner. Um I think this stuff is deeply im embedded within us. Like even ritual ritual is is you know, we could I don't know

do everything from our sofa, but we insist on doing it in a group and like doing this ceremony and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all the rest of it. And I think when you've got a species that's that hyper social, that cooperative, And that has a brain that's plastic that likes to copy each other. That is a recipe for invention. And then if you have a lot of that species,

And what that effectively means is that all those other species, yes, they they have technology. They're smart, they have technology, they're inventing technology. They are not able to invent technology in the way that we're able to invent technology. And importantly, they are kind of restricted by their physical analysis.

So for example, the hobbit is really well adapted to that island. The island starts changing too much, they don't necessarily they kind of gotta wait for their biology to pick up the right mutations to evolve. We invented And we just seem to do it time and time again. We see something and we're like, we'll just invent the deal. You know, we couldn't we we got to a point and we didn't start off like this, but it gets to a point when cumulative culture just kind of accelerates.

We got to a point where we would just look at a landscape that a lot of other species might see as a barrier, like for example, an open ocean and or a rainforest. And we would look at it and go, Right, let's invent some technology for this. Let's invent a raft. Let's, you know, invent the right kind of weapons to deal with a rainforest. I don't think those other species quite had

What a way to finish that. It's a story and a half about us ending up the last species, and to think, as you said right at the beginning. This is In the minority compared to the most of time with a story of humans that actually we're in a time when we are just the humans left. Or are we? Can I just interject with one thing there? So if let's say we've been around for 300,000 years.

The Neanderthals went extinct, we think, about forty thousand years ago. There's a suggestion that the Denisovans s was still kicking around maybe twenty five thousand years ago. Do you know what I mean? We've only been alone for 25,000 and and knowing our luck, they'll find a species that was knocking around like 15,000 years ago. But but we know 25,000 years, that is a tiny, tiny, tiny bloody window of us being the only species.

Ella, this has been absolutely fantastic and with the speed of all these new discoveries, new research, new science, within two years we'll have so much more to talk about. I'll be back in two days actually. But it it is just such an exciting feel. And it has been such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thank you so much for having me, honestly. It's so much fun just to be able to talk about all this stuff. And also, I have to say, with an audience as well, who I don't have to you know, do you know what I mean? Like I c I can just actually talk about Without having to ex Yes, thank you. I'm allowed to nerd out as much. This is the space for nerding up, that's what we want. Thank you, Albert. Humans. Thank you so much. Now if you have been enjoying the show please make sure to follow us.

That really helps us you'll be doing it. We'd really appreciate that. Don't forget you can also sign up to History Hits for hundreds of hours of original documentaries. New release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's all from me. in the next one