The other humans

Homo sapiens is the only human species alive today, and that is unusual. For most of the last two million years several human species lived at the same time. When our own species appeared 300,000 years ago, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo naledi were alive at the same time. Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis appear later in the record, and they were still alive when modern humans reached their islands.

700,000 years ago — The common ancestor. One population in Africa, usually called Homo heidelbergensis, is the last shared ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and us. Its descendants divide into three groups. One stays in Africa, one moves into Europe, and one moves into Asia.
430,000 years ago — The first Neanderthal features. Bones from Sima de los Huesos in Spain, 28 people found in one pit, already show Neanderthal features. The European group is separating from the others.
400,000 years ago — Neanderthals. They are short and heavy, their bodies suit cold climates, and their brains are as large as ours or larger. They make tools, bury their dead, use fire, and hunt large animals. They survive for more than 350,000 years.
390,000 years ago — Denisovans separate. Genetic studies place the separation of Neanderthals and Denisovans around this date. The earlier separation between Neanderthals and modern humans has a much wider range, between 800,000 and 400,000 years ago.
335,000 to 236,000 years ago — Homo naledi. A human species with a small brain, found far inside the Rising Star caves in South Africa. These dates cover the fossils only. The species itself may be much older, possibly two million years. If so, it survived almost unchanged while humans with far larger brains lived alongside it.
160,000 years ago — Denisovans at high altitude. A jawbone from Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Plateau, 3,280 metres above sea level, shows that Denisovans lived high in the mountains.
146,000 years ago — The first Denisovan face. The Harbin skull was found in northeastern China in 1933 and nicknamed Dragon Man. In 2025 it was confirmed as Denisovan, using DNA taken from the hardened plaque on its teeth and by analysing its proteins. For fifteen years before that, Denisovans were known almost only from genetics, and nobody knew what they looked like.
130,000 to 50,000 years ago — Homo luzonensis. A small human species found in Callao Cave on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. The first age given was 67,000 years. A later study of the same remains gives at least 130,000 years.
100,000 to 50,000 years ago — Homo floresiensis. A human species one metre tall, on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Species that live on small islands often become smaller over time, and that is what happened here. It made tools and hunted, with a brain one third the size of ours. Its ancestors had to cross open sea to reach the island.
50,000 years ago — The island species die out. Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis both disappear, at close to the same date that modern humans reach Southeast Asia.
48,000 to 32,000 years ago — Denisovans die out. The youngest confirmed Denisovan remains are a rib from Baishiya Karst Cave, dated inside this range. DNA found in cave floor deposits suggests they survived later than that, but the researchers who found it note that those deposits may have been disturbed and mixed.
40,000 years ago — Neanderthals die out. The last Neanderthal sites are in western Europe and in Spain and Portugal. The cause is disputed. The explanations offered are competition from modern humans, absorption into the modern human population through interbreeding, sharp changes in climate, or all three together. After this date, only one human species is left.
Denisovan height. Leg bones dredged from the seabed at Penghu, near the confirmed Denisovan jawbone found there, give the first estimate of how tall Denisovans were. Two individuals are estimated at roughly 180 and 190 centimetres. Neanderthal men averaged about 168 centimetres. This estimate is very recent and rests on bones that have not themselves been confirmed as Denisovan, so treat it as provisional.

Where each human species lived

The three groups separated by geography. Each one occupied a different part of the planet for hundreds of thousands of years.

Neanderthals lived in Europe and West Asia. Their territory reached from Portugal and Wales in the west to the Altai Mountains of Siberia in the east, and south into Israel, Iraq, and Uzbekistan. That territory is cold and mountainous, and much of it was covered by ice. Their bodies suited those conditions.
Denisovans lived in East and Southeast Asia. DNA and protein tests confirm them at four places: Denisova Cave in Siberia, Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Plateau, the Penghu Channel off Taiwan, and Harbin in northeastern China. A tooth from Cobra Cave in Laos is probably Denisovan, but this is not confirmed. The four confirmed sites are spread across 4,500 km and include cold mountains, thin air at high altitude, and warm wet coastline. Their DNA also survives in people living today in island Southeast Asia and New Guinea, so their real territory was much larger than the fossils alone show.
Homo sapiens lived in Africa first, then everywhere. Our species stayed inside Africa for roughly 250,000 years before the migration that lasted. We are the only one of the three groups that reached the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific islands.
The places where they met. Denisova Cave in Siberia was occupied by Neanderthals, by Denisovans, and by modern humans, at different times. The Levant, the land route between Africa and Eurasia, was occupied by Neanderthals and modern humans in turn across 100,000 years. Where their territories touched, the species met.

What the other humans left in us

The three groups did not only meet. They had children together, and the evidence is in the DNA of almost everyone alive today.

Neanderthal DNA. Every person whose ancestors came from outside Africa carries roughly 1.5 to 2 percent Neanderthal DNA. It comes from Neanderthals and modern humans having children together around 50,000 years ago in the Middle East. People in Africa carry a smaller amount, which arrived later when some of those mixed populations moved back into Africa.
Denisovan DNA. Papuans and Aboriginal Australians carry the most. The figure often quoted is up to 5 percent, but the methods disagree sharply, and one study that used no reference genome gives Papuans about 1 percent. People in East Asia and South Asia carry less than one percent. Europeans carry almost none. The pattern in living people matches the territory Denisovans occupied.
The Tibetan gene. Tibetans can live above 4,000 metres without getting sick from the thin air. The gene that allows this is called EPAS1, and it came from Denisovans. More than 80 percent of Tibetans carry it. The species that lived on the plateau first passed this gene to the humans who replaced them.
Denny. A piece of bone from Denisova Cave belonged to a girl whose mother was Neanderthal and whose father was Denisovan. She is the first person we know of with one parent from each of two human species.
The Neanderthal DNA that survives. No single person carries much Neanderthal DNA, but different people carry different pieces of it. Counting all living humans together, at least a fifth of the full Neanderthal genome still exists, and some estimates are far higher. The species died out, but a large part of its DNA did not.

The countries where these fossils were found

These are the countries where the human species above lived and where their remains were found. Each card below opens that country's page on this site.