We Were Not Alone: The Night 9 Human Species Shared the Earth | Documentary for Sleep

Close your eyes and drift back two hundred thousand years into the quiet of the Pleistocene night. In our own lifetime, every person we have ever met has belonged to a single species: Homo sapiens. Yet for most of deep time, sharing the planet with other kinds of humans was the normal condition of Earth. Tonight, in this calm, unhurried documentary for sleep, we take a gentle night journey across vanished Ice Age landscapes—Sundaland, Doggerland, the Mammoth Steppe, and the Green Sahara—and step inside the quiet limestone caves where nine distinct human species lived under the same stars: early Homo sapiens at Jebel Irhoud, Neanderthals deep inside Bruniquel Cave, Denisovans in the Altai Mountains and high on the Tibetan Plateau, Homo erectus along the Solo River of Java, Homo floresiensis on Flores, Homo luzonensis in Callao Cave, Homo longi in the northern plains of Harbin, and Homo naledi in the dark Star Chamber of South Africa. Designed for bedtime listening and restful nights: soft narration, dimmed visuals that won't wake a dark room, gentle campfire and cave ambience, and no sudden loud sounds. Where in the world are you listening from tonight, and what time is it where you are? Let us know in the comments below, settle in, and rest well. TIMESTAMPS / CHAPTERS: 00:00 A World of Many Campfires (200,000 Years Ago) 05:58 The Partitioned Planet: Sundaland, Doggerland & the Mammoth Steppe 11:15 Deep Under the Mountain: The Neanderthals of Bruniquel & Shanidar 18:11 The Ghost in the Pinky Bone: Denisovans & High-Altitude Tibet 25:06 The Two-Million-Year Wanderer: Homo erectus on the Solo River 31:30 Across the Wallace Line: Homo floresiensis of Liang Bua 37:28 The Secret of Callao Cave: Homo luzonensis in the Philippines 43:57 The Dragon Man of the North: Homo longi & the Harbin Cranium 49:36 The Star Chamber: Homo naledi in the Rising Star Cave 55:36 The African Mosaic: Homo heidelbergensis, Bodo & Red Deer Cave 01:01:28 Meetings by the Fire: Ancient Interbreeding & the DNA Within Us 01:06:08 The Last Ember & the Quiet Earth Tonight SCIENTIFIC & ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES: • Hublin, J.-J. et al. (2017). New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature, 546, 289–292. • Jaubert, J. et al. (2016). Early Neanderthal constructions deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France. Nature, 534, 111–114. • Krause, J., Pääbo, S. et al. (2010). The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of an unknown hominin from southern Siberia. Nature, 464, 894–897. • Chen, F., Hublin, J.-J. et al. (2019). A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau. Nature, 569, 409–412. • Rizal, Y., Ciochon, R. L. et al. (2019). Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000–108,000 years ago. Nature, 577, 381–385. • Sutikna, T. et al. (2016). Revised stratigraphy and chronology for Homo floresiensis at Liang Bua in Indonesia. Nature, 532, 366–369. • Détroit, F., Mijares, A. S. et al. (2019). A new species of Homo from the Late Pleistocene of the Philippines. Nature, 568, 181–186. • Ji, Q. et al. (2021). Late Middle Pleistocene Harbin cranium represents a new Homo species. The Innovation, 2(3), 100132. • Berger, L. R. et al. (2015) & Dirks, P. H. et al. (2017). The age of Homo naledi and associated sediments in the Rising Star Cave, South Africa. eLife, 6, e24231. #DocumentaryForSleep #SleepDocumentary #PrehistoricEarth #HumanEvolution #DeepTime #IceAge #Paleoanthropology #SleepingEarth