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Scientists are uncovering surprising evidence that human evolution was far more complex than we once believed. These videos explore groundbreaking discoveries showing that ancient human species including Neanderthals, Denisovans, and early modern humans didn’t just coexist, but mixed and interbred. From rare fossil finds to genetic proof hidden in modern DNA, anthropologists are piecing together a tangled human family tree with missing branches, hybrids, and long-lost populations. Animation is created by Bright Side.
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This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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00:00Whoa, there could have been more human species throughout history than we used to think.
00:06In one place in East China, Huolongdong, scientists found the remains of a human who lived around 300,000 years ago.
00:15They found a jawbone and parts of the skull.
00:20They carefully studied these bones to compare them with the bones of other ancient and modern humans.
00:25The remains themselves weren't that unusual.
00:30We know our human family is really diverse and has been around for millions of years.
00:35You know our ancient relative called Australopithecus, right?
00:39These fellas lived in different parts of Africa, and they were known for walking on two legs, just like modern humans.
00:47But their brains and some other parts of their bodies made them more similar to apes.
00:53Their teeth are a good example of how they were like a mix of apes and modern humans.
00:58Their canine teeth were smaller than those of apes, but their back teeth were still larger than ours.
01:05There were different types of them.
01:07You can recognize some, Paranthropus, because of their big jaws and teeth.
01:11One of the most famous fossils of Australopithecus is Lucy, a lady that's about 3.2 million years old.
01:21She was found in Ethiopia.
01:23So, we know that our family got pretty big from that point, or probably even before it.
01:29But it's always great to welcome some new members, which seemed to be the case with this new discovery.
01:36Some parts of these bones look similar to the bones of ancient humans, while other parts look more like the bones modern humans have.
01:43For example, the person whose bones they found didn't have a real chin.
01:48That means we can't put it in any of the groups we know of, like Neanderthals, or maybe even Homo sapiens.
01:56So, might we be missing a branch from the human family tree, or an important step in our evolution?
02:03What we're looking at here could be some mix between the creatures that became modern humans like us,
02:09and the ones that turned into what we today know as Denisovans.
02:13It takes time to figure it all out, though.
02:17We hadn't known much about Denisovans, either, until we found some of their bones in a cave in the mountains.
02:24These bones are really rare, and we only had a few pieces to analyze.
02:28But their genes told us a lot more about their past than their fossils.
02:33Different kinds of humans lived on this planet, but through time, they spread around.
02:38One group started living in Africa.
02:41Those are our kind, Homo sapiens.
02:44Another group went to Europe.
02:46That's how we got Neanderthals.
02:48But some of these ancient human groups moved all the way to Asia.
02:52That's where we can trace a new interesting kind, Denisovans.
02:56It seems they're cousins to both modern humans and Neanderthals.
03:00The three species actually shared a common ancestor about 765,000 years ago.
03:07It's still not clear why Neanderthals and Denisovans took different paths,
03:11but one theory says that it was mostly because the Arctic ice sheet expanded southward all the way to the Black Sea,
03:18cutting off Europe from Asia.
03:20Life, or better yet, the planet, kept them separated for a very long time.
03:26Plus, they kept changing places where they lived all the time, always looking for something better, like every other human species before and after them.
03:35But this didn't last forever.
03:37Scientists found genes from two groups of Denisovans, one in mainland Asia and the other in a place called Melanesia.
03:45So, not only did they have different groups within their populations,
03:50but it also seems that after thousands and thousands of years of developing independently,
03:55the members of these three populations, Neanderthal, Denisovans, and modern humans,
04:02somehow met again and spread all across the land.
04:065% of the Denisovan genome lives on, not in the area where scientists found their bones,
04:11but in people that live thousands of miles away in Southeast Asia.
04:15For instance, in Papua New Guinea.
04:18But scientists believed that the cave where they found the remains of Denisovans might be as far north as they had lived.
04:25It would have been way too cold for them to survive if they had gone further north.
04:30From there, they traveled as far south as Indonesia.
04:33This was possible because, during their time, sea levels were lower than today,
04:39so Indonesia was connected to mainland Asia.
04:42But they probably didn't make it to Australia.
04:45Since it was still separated by water.
04:48These three groups mix together, too.
04:51Scientists have found a bone of a girl who had a Neanderthal mom and a Denisovan dad.
04:56It's the only first-generation hybrid human we've discovered.
04:59She even got a cool nickname, Denny.
05:04One of the mysteries about Denisovans is how they disappeared.
05:08Maybe they mixed so much with other humans that they just blended in.
05:12Or, it's possible that modern humans' ancestors were stronger, had better tools,
05:17or even brought some diseases that didn't affect them, but they affect Denisovans.
05:22Climate and where they lived might have also played a role.
05:26Denisovans lived in a wide range of environments, from cold parts of Asia to tropical Indonesia.
05:31Climate changes and the challenges of different habitats might have been really difficult to survive.
05:38But it's hard to draw strict lines in our family tree.
05:42We're still relatively new at learning about it anyway.
05:45Who knows how many new members we are about to discover?
05:49Half a century ago, a team of scientists had an idea that a collection of fossils
05:55they found at the Great Rift Valley in Tanzania were actually the remains of some new human species.
06:01Yup, that was the time when we welcomed Homo habilis into the family.
06:06It was a big discovery at that time since people mostly believed that the story of our evolution had been really simple.
06:13First, there were Australopiths that looked like apes.
06:17After them, there was Homo erectus, the upright man.
06:22They most likely lived in Africa around 2 million years ago, but also expanded really quickly across Eurasia.
06:29It was the first human species that we know about to have traveled such long distances to find a better place for life.
06:36They looked and behaved like humans.
06:38Plus, they were probably the first of our ancient ancestors who learned how to deal with fire.
06:44Maybe they were the first to cook food as well.
06:47And that's what we're definitely thankful for.
06:50Cooking food was an innovation that made the human diet more nutritive, and we could grow bigger and smarter brains.
06:56So, yeah, Homo habilis made things more...complicated.
07:03They could walk on two legs, but they could also be better at climbing trees than walking on the ground like us.
07:09Plus, their brains were smaller than what a human should probably have.
07:13At first, it seemed these fossils could be from a completely different side of the family, related to other creatures, Australopithecus africanus, that looked like apes.
07:24But more and more diggings showed that even though its jaws and teeth were similar, Homo habilis was still bigger and a bit different.
07:32The name means handyman, because they were probably able to make and use simple tools.
07:40Searching for more fossils in Africa wasn't easy, because a team of researchers had to deal with wild animals and tough conditions all the time.
07:48But eventually, they managed to find some teeth and a strange skull that was, again, something different from the ancestors we knew about.
07:57The teeth were really big, so this new fella got the nickname of Nutcracker Man.
08:04For a long time, everyone believed this kind had evolved to eat hard foods.
08:09But the fossil teeth didn't show much damage, so they might have been eating food that was softer than we thought.
08:16This finding might help us understand how our teeth have been evolving through time, too.
08:21And right there, in the same layers of soil, where Nutcracker Man was lying, they found ancient stone tools.
08:30At first, they thought those had belonged to Nutcracker.
08:33But as they kept digging, they found more fossils that didn't match Nutcracker Man.
08:38It means that someone else must be the real toolmaker.
08:42But that's another story for another time.
08:48You're way more Neanderthal than you think.
08:50At least when it comes to your DNA.
08:53These ancient hominids were shorter and stockier than humans today.
08:57They made stone tools, used fire, wore clothing, and had some rituals of their own.
09:03The official theory says that they went extinct 40,000 years ago.
09:08But a new study says Neanderthals probably never really disappeared completely, but could have mixed with modern humans.
09:15It looks like every modern human has about 3% of the Neanderthal genome in their DNA.
09:22If it's accurate, it means Neanderthals were more connected with our ancestors than we previously thought and shared a long history of living together.
09:30Neanderthals were very close relatives of modern humans.
09:35But our families separated about half a million years ago.
09:40More than 10 years ago, scientists discovered that Neanderthals had families with the early humans who traveled out of Africa.
09:46Because of this, people living outside of Africa today have about 1-2% of Neanderthal DNA in their genes.
09:55We now have only 3 really good examples of complete genetic code from these ancient hominids.
10:00The first one comes from bones found in a cave in Croatia that are 50,000 to 65,000 years old.
10:08Two more examples, which are about 80,000 and 50,000 years old, were found in caves in Eurasia.
10:15Scientists still aren't sure as much about how modern human DNA got into the Neanderthal genetic alphabet,
10:22because they don't have enough material to study.
10:24But they did compare the existing DNA of three Neanderthals with the DNA of 2,000 modern humans.
10:32They found that the Neanderthal DNA might be made up of up to 3.7% of modern human genetic code.
10:39It means that in the ancient Neanderthal population, about 1 in 30 parents were modern humans.
10:45The scientists found that modern human DNA got mixed into the Neanderthal genetic alphabet
10:52during at least two periods when humans and Neanderthals were interbreeding.
10:57This happened once about 200,000 to 250,000 years ago,
11:01and again about 100,000 to 120,000 years ago.
11:06There might have been other times they mixed, but we can't see those in the DNA we have now.
11:11Another recent study, which hasn't been fully checked by other scientists yet,
11:16says that most of the Neanderthal DNA in modern humans came from one big period of mixing,
11:22about 47,000 years ago, that lasted for almost 7,000 years.
11:28Scientists found skulls that are about 100,000 years old in two caves in the Middle East.
11:34These skulls look like they belonged to early modern humans,
11:37but have some features like bigger eyebrows that might show they had Neanderthal DNA.
11:43This could be because of gene flow from Neanderthals,
11:46and it fits in the mixing time frame.
11:50The study also looked at the genetic differences in the three Neanderthal genomes,
11:56and found out that Neanderthals had an even smaller population than scientists thought before.
12:01It could be another proof that Neanderthals didn't just go extinct,
12:06but became part of the modern human gene pool.
12:10Many groups of modern humans left Africa and mixed with Neanderthals
12:13so much that Neanderthals couldn't stay separate.
12:17In the future, scientists want to study how modern human DNA affected Neanderthals.
12:23This could help us understand if this mixing had good or bad effects on Neanderthals.
12:28Neanderthals aren't our only relatives from the past.
12:33There used to be at least nine species of humans on our planet.
12:36One of them, Homo habilis, earned the nickname Handyman
12:40because stone tools were found with its remains.
12:44It lived in eastern and southern Africa.
12:47This early human had a slightly larger brain than its older relatives and an ape-like face.
12:54Homo habilis was about four feet tall and ate a variety of foods.
12:58For a long time, scientists thought Homo habilis was the oldest member of our human family.
13:04But new dating methods have shown that Homo erectus, another ancient human,
13:09might be older and not related to Homo habilis.
13:14Homo naledi is a more mysterious member of our human family,
13:18discovered in a South African cave in 2013.
13:21It's the only region of the world where their remains were found.
13:25They walked on two feet but were also good at climbing trees.
13:30They were small, about four feet nine inches tall,
13:33weighed around 88 pounds, and had small brains.
13:37We don't know much about how they lived since we haven't found stone tools or other cultural evidence.
13:42But some scientists think they might have buried their deceased and made cave art.
13:49In 2010, scientists found some fossils in a cave in Siberia,
13:54but they weren't sure what species they belonged to.
13:57These fossils are from a group called the Denisovans,
14:00who lived between 194,000 and 51,000 years ago.
14:05We don't know much about them because we only have a few fossils.
14:10But DNA analysis has shown that Denisovans were closely related to Neanderthals and modern humans.
14:17They even had families with early humans, especially in Southeast Asia.
14:22There aren't enough fossils to give Denisovans their own species name,
14:26but their genes are found in modern humans,
14:28which means they might be part of our own species.
14:31As scientists study more about Denisovans and fossils in Southeast Asia,
14:37we might understand better how different species fit into the Homo family tree.
14:43In 2003, they found fossils of a very small human-like species in a cave on the island of Flores in Indonesia.
14:51These tiny people lived between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.
14:56They were only about three feet six inches tall.
14:58Scientists think they might have come from another species, Homo erectus,
15:03and became smaller over time because they lived on an island with limited food.
15:08Because of their small size, they're often nicknamed hobbits.
15:13Around 40,000 years ago, Homo sapiens, yep, that's us,
15:18were the last humans left out of many different kinds of human-like species that walked on two legs.
15:24So, the logical question is, what happened to the others?
15:28And what did we have to do with their disappearance?
15:31Some scientists think we survived because our offspring lived longer,
15:35or because we were better at handling changes in the weather.
15:39Others think we might have competed with other human species,
15:42or maybe mixed with them and shared genes.
15:46About 300,000 years ago, the first Homo sapiens lived in Africa.
15:51They didn't look exactly like us, but they were more similar to us than other early humans.
15:57They had tall, round skulls with almost straight foreheads.
16:01Unlike Neanderthals, they didn't have thick brows or jutting jaws like Homo naledi.
16:06They also had chins, which no other early humans had, though we still don't know why.
16:12Homo sapiens lived in bigger groups and had more genetic diversity compared to other early humans.
16:18This helped us in many ways, not just in staying healthy.
16:23Having big social networks across different places was like having a safety net.
16:28If we ran out of food or water, we could go to other groups we were connected to,
16:32and they would help us because we weren't strangers, we were family.
16:37These big networks also helped these early humans share new ideas and inventions.
16:41A big simulation showed that later species of humans could live in many different environments
16:48because of these wide networks and the ability to adapt.
16:52We know that Neanderthals were really smart,
16:55but Homo sapiens might have been just a little bit smarter.
16:59Small inventions like weaving and sewing needles could have given Homo sapiens an edge.
17:04Scientists have found evidence of weaving from 35,000 years ago
17:08and sewing needles from 30,000 years ago.
17:11Weaving lets you make things like baskets and nets to catch food.
17:15Sewing needles help you make better clothes and tents,
17:18which keep you and your youngsters warm and safe,
17:21which is very important for survival.
17:23That's it for today.
17:28So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,
17:30then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
17:33Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side!
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