What Happened to All the Other Human Species?

What happened to the other human species? Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus and the hobbits of Flores all lived at the same time as us. Fifty thousand years ago, you would not have been the only kind of human on Earth. Today, all eight billion of us belong to a single species. So what happened to everyone else? Meet the other humans: Homo erectus, who lasted almost two million years; the Neanderthals, built to survive the ice age; the mysterious Denisovans, first discovered from a finger bone the size of a pea; and the tiny "hobbits" of Flores. Find out how each one disappeared, why we were the ones left standing, and why some of them never completely left. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 We weren't alone 0:56 Homo erectus: two million years 2:32 The Neanderthals 3:19 When we met them 4:24 The Denisovans 5:37 The hobbits of Flores 7:04 Why did we survive? 7:56 They never fully left 8:25 The last human species 💬 Which of the other humans would you most want to meet? Tell me in the comments. ▶️ WATCH NEXT: We Were Prey for 2 Million Years. Here's How We Survived    • How Humans Survived as Prey, Explained by ...   📺 Full playlist:    • How Early Humans Really Lived   📚 SOURCES • Rizal, Y. et al. (2020). Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000–108,000 years ago. Nature, 577. • Lordkipanidze, D. et al. (2013). A complete skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the evolutionary biology of early Homo. Science, 342. • Berger, T. D. & Trinkaus, E. (1995). Patterns of trauma among the Neandertals. Journal of Archaeological Science, 22. • Prüfer, K. et al. (2014). The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains. Nature, 505. • Higham, T. et al. (2014). The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance. Nature, 512. • Krause, J. et al. (2010). The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of an unknown hominin from southern Siberia. Nature, 464. • Chen, F. et al. (2019). A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau. Nature, 569. • Fu, Q. et al. (2025). Denisovan mitochondrial DNA from dental calculus of the 146,000-year-old Harbin cranium. Cell. • Slon, V. et al. (2018). The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. Nature, 561. • Huerta-Sánchez, E. et al. (2014). Altitude adaptation in Tibetans caused by introgression of Denisovan-like DNA. Nature, 512. • Brown, P. et al. (2004). A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia. Nature, 431. • Sutikna, T. et al. (2016). Revised stratigraphy and chronology for Homo floresiensis at Liang Bua in Indonesia. Nature, 532. • Détroit, F. et al. (2019). A new species of Homo from the Late Pleistocene of the Philippines. Nature, 568. #Neanderthals #Denisovans #HumanEvolution