The Other Humans: Why We Survived?

For most of human history, we were not alone. Human evolution was shaped by multiple human species living side by side, from Neanderthals in Europe to Denisovans in Asia, before all but one disappeared. Tristan Hughes is joined by Ella Al-Shamahi to explore the story of the early humans who once shared our world. How did these different species evolve? Did they compete or coexist? And what do the latest discoveries reveal about the tangled story of human evolution and the survival of Homo sapiens? MORE Homo Sapiens v Neanderthals Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000760668203 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/01POus7bWJQYw2K3O7nIDj?si=o34u0WS-QUeM0xRBt1_iDA Human Evolution: Dragon Man Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000633248999 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/128XsUffcThVirTghas7OA?si=wFREerSWQYytxTemknBJJw The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch here: @TheAncientsPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@TheAncientsPodcast Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:44Tristan Hughes?

  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. 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.

• 1:24Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 1:58Tristan Hughes?

  Ella, it is great to have you back on the show.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks so much for having me. I had so much fun last time.

• 2:02Tristan Hughes?

  It was a lot of fun. And today, we're kind of doing a tour of our extinct human relatives, archaic humans.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Those extinct people, but yeah, yeah, the archaics.

• 2:14Tristan Hughes?

  But explaining that if we went back 100,000 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.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  I cannot get my head around 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 as 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. And I think it's so difficult for us to understand because 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.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  We previously were 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. You know, I'm sorry, I think 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, I don't even, I can't comprehend how big the family tree has got since I became a paleoanthropologist, you know?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  So like when I was like 18 and now I'm, you know, 42, like 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 they think we've found two hobbit species. Yeah, the family tree just keeps expanding.

• 4:06Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, 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?

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. So basically 20 odd years ago, they discovered a new species of human. They called it Homo floresiensis because 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 realised anatomically, no, that's an adult. And it was so controversial

• 4:46Speaker 01

  that there were like shouting matches in anthropology conferences because there was people kind of understandably being like, one fossil does not a species make. You can't find one fossil that's unusual. And, you know, 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 field, 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

• 5:28Speaker 01

  we thought humans were defined. And yet here we are with a species that, by the way, is probably, comes up to my hips. 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, giant carnivorous flesh eating marabou storks that are taller than me, and these miniature elephant like creatures, they're relatives of elephants, they're called stegodons. And on this island, they were so small that they were the size of cows. 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 like, people couldn't believe it. It took a really long time to convince some people. It was basically when

• 6:13Speaker 01

  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 thi- this is why a lot of us are just like, this is the tip of the iceberg.

• 6:33Tristan Hughes?

  And this is the thing, I wanted to start with that because it's a 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 they've done. It's extraordinary.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  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 Denisovans made that art. There's a wild boar there as well. It's like, that's the first figurative art we have.

• 7:08Tristan Hughes?

  The water pigs.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  It's, it's what, it's, you know, it's wild. It's, um, yeah, it's, it's an absolutely incredible thing. I think it's so hard for us to get our heads around. 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 going to inherit the earth, so to speak. There was none of that. We, we were pretty average to start off with.

• 7:52Tristan Hughes?

  But the classic image you get, isn't it? And I think you can actually even see it on the ancients 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 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've got to throw that in the bin, don't we?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  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. And it's not that I I love men, it's not that, I often to my detriment, let me tell you, but it's not that, it's that of all the things in the world, that is the one thing that men were not doing on their own, procreating, like, you know, when 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 extingues, and it's just not the case. In fact, human evolution now, we understand is is like some kind of crazy, crazy ass bush tree.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  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.

• 9:17Tristan Hughes?

  Is that a can of worms that we can tackle? What is a species?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it's worth doing that because I think it confuses a lot of people. And if it makes you feel any better, all the lovely listeners out there and and viewers, join the club. None of us know what a species is. But I think that 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, 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 and speciation, you realise that actually, biologists can't

• 10:01Speaker 01

  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, and 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 loose.

• 10:27Tristan Hughes?

  Because we have covered in our last chat, clear evidence, Neanderthals and humans had sex.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:33Tristan Hughes?

  But I think as we'll we'll explore other figures like the Denisovans today.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:37Tristan Hughes?

  There's also evidence of interbreeding, Neanderthal Denisovans, Denisovans, Homo sapiens as well.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:41Tristan Hughes?

  And so that is where it does start getting, really blurs the lines, doesn't it?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really, really does. And it's it's interesting because 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 little bit of Neanderthal DNA in them. But I think there's this really interesting narrative that's come up. 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 purer Homo sapiens. Because those outside of Africa have interbred with these other species of human. And the funny thing is, that's actually incorrect because not only do we know that there is a little bit of Neanderthal DNA in Sub-Saharan Africans, just because of back migration.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  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 that was probably interbreeding within 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 lineage. So a ghost lineage is when you're analyzing DNA

• 12:07Speaker 01

  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 Neanderthals, they have the source material, right? With the Neanderthals, we've got a Neanderthal genome. With Denisovans, we've got a Denisovan genome, we've got a few of them, right? But we just don't have whoever this ghost lineage is. So I think it's Erob and a few others from West Africa. There is a signature of an ancient species who, and we're like, what species is that? Yeah, so, um, some of the guys behind the ledi, the discovery of Homo naledi, some of those guys are like, oh, maybe it's naledi because naledi is in

• 12:50Speaker 01

  South Africa, but it could be Hydralbagenza. We know those Hydralbagenza are 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 and you're like the rest of us.

• 13:06Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I think this is a fun time then to start to meet the team or

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:11Tristan Hughes?

  Meet the tour.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 13:12Tristan Hughes?

  Meet the family or a quick tour of humanity.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Who's your favourite then? Go on.

• 13:15Tristan Hughes?

  Um, my favourite is the one we're starting with because it feels like the granddaddy. You know, the most successful species of all time. Homo erectus.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Homo erectus.

• 13:25Tristan Hughes?

  And it is, what a record, almost two million years it was on this earth.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  It is really, really impressive and 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 there's Homo ogasta, who are the African version of them. I think these days, most of us are like, just, it's probably just all Homo erectus. And it 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 a little bit.

• 14:12Tristan Hughes?

  It's good old habilis.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like habilis, there's a big discussion about was habilis 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 it 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, because there's been a few suggestions of stuff, but let's just not focus on that all in the last few weeks, shall we say? But yeah, let's, it'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.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  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 of. Which is part of the reason why that image just doesn't work anymore. Yeah.

• 15:08Tristan Hughes?

  But it is such, is it controversial to say that I prefer Homo erectus to Neanderthals?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm surprised by that, I think. What, how come?

• 15:17Tristan Hughes?

  It's just more the fact-

• 15:18Speaker 01

  What's wrong with you?

• 15:20Tristan Hughes?

  I like, as an outsider in, first of all, I always like bucking the trend.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:23Tristan Hughes?

  But we did an interview a couple of years ago with John McNab from Southampton University.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:29Tristan Hughes?

  And what I remember, hopefully they got the video footage showing it.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  He sold you on it, didn't he?

• 15:32Tristan Hughes?

  But he, he took out the hand axe. And he said, the fact that you find this tool, whether it's in Southeast Asia.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:41Tristan Hughes?

  Or Africa or whatever, Homo erectus had the cognitive ability that they knew how to create this pretty difficult object, unlike the older analomecry tools from previous humans. And they could then pass it down through generations.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:57Tristan Hughes?

  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 associate it and having that hand axe tool and, and just the, the whole time period and the geographic extent of them.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:11Tristan Hughes?

  So I, I, I feel like Homo erectus deserves its due. It's time in the sun as well.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  It really, you know, and it doesn't, I think the thing with Homo erectus, bless it also, I think for a lot of the public, obviously they just remember the Friends joke. Uh, 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 haven't quite had their due. But I, I think

• 16:40Speaker 01

  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 because you kind of, you need better resolution to have stories. Like with Neanderthals, you, we've got just insane resolution at this point. Just because you know what it's like, the fossil record kind of gets worse and worse and worse, the deeper in time you get.

• 17:23Speaker 02

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• 18:14Tristan Hughes?

  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 hydeobigensis.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  I used to think Homo hydeobigensis, hold on, I used to think, there we go, if that makes anyone feel any better, even I can't say it. Homo hydeobigensis, I used to just feel very comfortable with, basically. I was like, great, Homo hydeobigensis is the 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 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.

• 18:56Tristan Hughes?

  What time period roughly was it associated with?

• 18:58Speaker 01

  So, I mean, to be fair, they called it the muddle in the middle, which 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 300,000 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 400,000 years, yes, I think 500,000 years as well. Like, it's, yeah, it's that muddle in the middle where everybody just goes, we don't know what to do with this. 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 it was interesting actually, because we shot, we started shooting human.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  And I was using the term hydropigensis, knowing that he wasn't a hundred percent okay with it. And it went to him and he was like, guys, you just got to dump it now.

• 19:51Tristan Hughes?

  You've got to dump it now.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, he goes, he goes, he goes, you've got to be careful because he goes, it's just the way you're using it. He goes, just be careful because it's not.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Because I wasn't just referring to it as like, Homo hydropigensis is species, I was referring to it in the ancestral, our common ancestor, our likely common ancestor with Neanderthals. And being that he 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 because we just thought we'd like this show to. Be scientifically kind of relevant for at least two years. So yeah, so hydropigensis is something, whether it's one species or several, it will probably end up being one or two species.

• 20:39Tristan Hughes?

  And the common ancestor between Neanderthals, Denisovans and us, we still don't really know.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  No, no clue.

• 20:46Tristan Hughes?

  No idea, no clue at all.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, no clue at this point.

• 20:49Tristan Hughes?

  Shall we talk about Denisovans?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:51Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, come on, because they deserve time in the spotlight as well, don't they? So, so set the scene, Denisovans, whereabouts we thinking in the world?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Okay, so have you guys done an, you must have done an episode on Denisovans?

• 21:02Tristan Hughes?

  Kind of.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:04Tristan Hughes?

  And it involves Tibet and the handprints up in the Tibetan plateau.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:09Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, which I'm sure.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  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, man. 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 realised we really didn't know much.

• 21:44Tristan Hughes?

  And so the landscape was generally like Homo sapiens in Africa, Neanderthals in Europe, Homo erectus in East Asia.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  I mean, we were still kind of debating if Homo erectus, right? The dates, because I will say the dates in, in the Far East are.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  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, that's where Sfante Paba, who won the Nobel Prize for sequencing Neanderthal genome along with other things, I guess. Um, he, um, his team were basically trying to extract Neanderthal DNA off like anything they could find, basically at this point. Um, a tiny little finger bone is absolutely tiny, was found in a cave in Siberia, in Russia, called Denisova Cave. They crushed it up. They were like, great, let's get some Neanderthal DNA out of it. And they actually extracted some Neanderthal DNA only upon examination.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  It wasn't a Neanderthal, but it was human, but it wasn't Homo sapiens. And it was just explosive because they had realised 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 of this species sequenced to really high resolution. And yet had no idea what the species looked like. So, 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?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  That's what they're doing with a hobbit, for example, and that's what they're doing with Homo malei. They're desperately trying to extract DNA because it would kind of 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 this species DNA sequenced. We now know as a result, all these things, for example, they, they realised that they were really closely related to the Neanderthals, to the point where some paleoanthropologists would actually argue that they're Asian Neanderthals.

• 23:50Tristan Hughes?

  Right, okay.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  They realise they're incredibly closely related to us. They realise 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 Denisovans.

• 24:10Tristan Hughes?

  I love that fact. It's so interesting.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  It's actually the best case that we have of really positive intergression 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 they were what you call undiagnostic bone. And 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, that could be human, that could be cave bear, 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

• 24:55Speaker 01

  bags in museums or like at these sites and you know, they're just labelled. But they started going through them. It was actually, I think, a PhD student and she went through it and she realised, she was using this incredible technology called Zoom MS and she realised 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 Denisovan. So they were at the point where they had a hybrid, they'd found a hybrid. Like, nobody had found a hybrid of anything before, of any humans. 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

• 25:38Speaker 01

  lot of the material in the Far East is Denisovan and it's mislabelled.

• 25:43Tristan Hughes?

  Is this where we get the name, the legendary name, Dragon Man?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Well, you would think, because there's a lot of, 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, as dragon teeth and what have you. So it's just, it's just a fascinating kind of little detail. But anyway, the story goes that in China during World War Two, 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.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  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 Neanderthal skull. It 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 details about this that I think are really funny. One is that that wonderful story about the bottom of a well.

• 27:04Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been called into question.

• 27:06Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, no.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Like, some people are like, hmm, we think it was a bit more suspect than that. And that was like a cover up story. And 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 a bit, but it wasn't, you know, a full skull.

• 27:26Tristan Hughes?

  A full piece, yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  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 Denisovan. But how long has it just taken me to tell that story? That is the mystery of the Denisovan.

• 27:44Tristan Hughes?

  But it's great. No.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Like that.

• 27:46Tristan Hughes?

  You did the story the justice though, because it's the same time that people.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  But I'm tired. I need a break. Do you know what I mean? Like.

• 27:52Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, stop now. Right.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  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.

• 28:07Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, that story. And then you see the replicas of that skull today. Actually, we have done an episode with Chris on it.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:13Tristan Hughes?

  And first of all, the replica skull, which is green, which I love. It's hilarious.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's because it's his, what was that in a 3D?

• 28:19Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, I think.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  What do you call it? A M?

• 28:21Tristan Hughes?

  A 3D printer. Yeah, but it is, but it's incredible and it gives you the size of the cranium.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:27Tristan Hughes?

  The fact that that's that new story, the link to Tibet today and explaining why they can live at such high altitudes with this species as well. And yes, normally you think, you know, big skulls or you think of like the Neanderthals, 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 it's developing all the time.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%.

• 28:47Tristan Hughes?

  We did cover the Neanderthals quite a lot in our last episode, but of course they are in the picture.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:53Tristan Hughes?

  Some 100,000 years ago as well. And at that time, although they still, they'd been around for a long time by then, but they're still doing incredibly well, aren't they?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  They are, they are. They're incredibly successful species. They were hanging on in Europe and in Central Asia. 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 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.

• 29:24Tristan Hughes?

  Hmm.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean? It's partly, I think, because so many paleontologists, 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 paleontology started, I guess, a bit more in Europe. I mean, it was also happening in Africa, obviously as well. But 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 not in a, an intentional way. I just mean like, that's where the researchers are, you know?

• 30:00Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely. But what's really interesting right now is in the Far East, people are also really interested in human origins.

• 30:14Tristan Hughes?

  Good, good.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  But also partly that's because there's this narrative that maybe humanity started from here.

• 30:20Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  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 then humanity must have started here.

• 30:31Tristan Hughes?

  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, Homo naledi.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:45Tristan Hughes?

  You mentioned how when the Hoppet was discovered, a lot of disbelief when that was found. Same thing with Homo naledi.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Homo naledi was found by two amateur cavers. They were amateur cavers at the time, they've become a lot more professional since then. And they basically stumbled upon, hey, what? Because it is in a place where there are so many human fossils. It's actually, I believe it's actually part of, it was already part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• 31:10Tristan Hughes?

  The Cradle of Humankind.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. 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 and was based at Wits University. And they basically, I think they teamed up with National Geographic as well. And they basically started this massive excavation project that also had this 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

• 31:56Speaker 01

  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 in. What the team behind the leadies discovery did is they basically completely opened it up. They were like, it's open. You want to come research, we're going to make it straightforward for you. And part of the reason, though, why they did that is, is yes, they're kind of revolutionary in their thinking, but also it's because they had so many fossils. They had so many fossils that I think they wanted help understanding what on earth they were looking at.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  You've got to understand, they were found in this cave. And this cave system is quite difficult to get to. This particular bit of this, of the cave is quite difficult to get to. And there's not much else in there. So if it was a, if it was, for example, because, let's say, a flood or a bear or some kind of carnivore was taking Homo naledi in, 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 Homo naledi.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  It's very difficult to give an interpretation to that other than burial, that they were intentionally

• 33:26Speaker 01

  like put there basically by their peers. But this Homo naledi 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 beha- beha- it's, it's a behaviour 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 burial is not something that is associated with a small brain.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  And you've got them doing burial. And a lot of us now just think that's burial. It was really controversial when it first came out, but I think we're at the point where it's like, oh, guys, it does look like burial.

• 34:21Tristan Hughes?

  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 analyse the. But that's the beauty of as time goes on and having that scientific technology. Yeah, it looks pretty, pretty clear now. And we think 100,000 years old or less.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so, so basically 100,000, I mean, it depends how you look at it, but certainly around 300,000, they were still around, they're probably still, they were probably still around 100,000 as well, if I remember the last estimate.

• 34:50Tristan Hughes?

  Same time as modern humans in Africa.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  A nice little bit of overlap. I can't remember when exactly they ended. I should probably check that. But yeah, but certainly 300,000 years when we were there, they were, they were around. Yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 02

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• 36:00Tristan Hughes?

  So those are some of the other big species.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  So it's kind of useful to think about this for a second. So you've got us, obviously, you've got the Neanderthals, you've got the Denisovans, you've got Homo erectus, you've got Homo hydeobegensis, even though we're not 100% sure if it's a true species, but there's something going on there. You've got Homo naledi. Did I already say the hobbit? No.

• 36:21Tristan Hughes?

  We mentioned it earlier, Homo floresiensis.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Floresiensis. You've got the second what we think hobbit-like species, Homo luzonensis. So you're looking at eight human species that were contemporaneous with us. The magnificent eight.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  But here's the really, really interesting thing. If that ghost lineage that is in those West Africans is not Lenedi and it's not Heidel Begensis, that means that there were nine species.

• 36:50Tristan Hughes?

  At least.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yes, contemporaneous, at least.

• 36:54Tristan Hughes?

  At least at the time. And once again, so that ghost species is the one that could be our ancestor again.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  So in West Africans, some populations of West Africans, there is a signature of an ancient species that introgressed, that kind of, um, it's, it's DNA kind of came into ours, our Homo sapiens DNA, it's alien DNA, but we call it a ghost lineage because we don't have the source. So if, like with the Neanderthal DNA in ours, we know it's 2%, but we would never call that ghost lineage because we know the source of it. Or as we call it a ghost because we're like, woo, we have no idea who you are. Why are you showing yourself? If you take nothing away from today, viewers and listeners, can I just suggest it's the term ghost lineages?

• 37:43Tristan Hughes?

  But I mean, that is, is very, very cool. We've covered everything from ghost lineages to dragon man.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:48Tristan Hughes?

  And more.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  High five.

• 37:49Tristan Hughes?

  Well done. Yes. I've got a hard side. If there was at least eight or nine lineages at that, well, species 100,000 years ago, we talked in the last episode about, you know, larger genetic variation, bigger groups, Homo sapiens, how they can beat the Neanderthals 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?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  I think it was a little bit of luck, but I don't think it was just luck. I just don't, 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 paleoanthropologists 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.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  It does look like there was basically like continuous volcanic activity that seemed quite intense. But I think a lot of paleoanthropologists consider us to be the final nail in the coffin to a lot of species. And I think what's happening there is that we have, in my opinion, we have a brain that is primed to 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

• 39:33Speaker 01

  another species. And by nature, we are incredibly, incredibly social. You might not realise it, but music, dancing, ritual, they're all behaviours which are, a lot of us would argue, very inbuilt into us, that are, 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 higher pain thresholds after dancing with complete strangers in a synchronised manner. I think this stuff is deeply embedded within us. Like, even ritual, ritual is, you know, we could, I don't

• 40:17Speaker 01

  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, you've got gold dust. 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, but 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 anatomy.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  So for example, the hobbit is really well adapted to that island. The island starts changing too much. They don't necessarily, they've kind of got to wait for their biology to pick up the right mutations to evolve. We invent the technology.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  And we just seem to do it time and time again. We see something and we're like, we'll just invent it. 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 that.

• 41:52Tristan Hughes?

  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. The story of humans that actually we're in a time when we are just the humans left. Or are we?

• 42:09Speaker 01

  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 40,000 years ago. There's a suggestion that the Denisovans were still kicking around maybe 25,000 years ago. Do you know what I mean? We've only been alone for 25,000 and knowing our luck, they'll find a species that was knocking around like 15,000 years ago, but that we know. 25,000 years, that is a tiny, tiny, tiny bloody window of us being the only species around.

• 42:41Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  I'll be back in two days, actually. Oh, God.

• 42:53Tristan Hughes?

  But it is just such an exciting field and it has been such a pleasure to have you on the show.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  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 could just actually talk about this stuff without having to. Yes, thank you. I'm allowed to nerd out as much as I want.

• 43:13Tristan Hughes?

  This is the space for nerding out, that's what we want. Thank you, Ella.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 43:20Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was the paleoanthropologist Ella Al Shamahi introducing you to several key early humans that coexisted alongside us on planet Earth tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years ago. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Ancients. I hope you enjoyed it. Now, if you have been enjoying the show, please make sure to follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.