Homo sapiens evolved in relative isolation in the south of Africa, so when we met our cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans for the first time, it was quite the shocker. After all, even today we like to discriminate against those who are slightly different from us, and other hominins certainly fit the box of too different to be a friend and too similar to be irrelevant, and that’s where the first genocide started.
Humans first met Neanderthals 55,000 years ago when they ventured out of Africa, and actually a lot of people interbred with the strange hominins, leading to most non-African populations to have some form of Neanderthal DNA. Shortly after, we also met the Denisovans, with whom we also interbred with (mainly seen in Papuans, Melanesians, and Australian Aboriginals). However, the Denisovans and Neanderthals both disappeared over 30,000 years ago, at the height of the Ice Age, probably due to competition or a genocide by us.
Humans, while not as physically strong as Neanderthals or Denisovans, were far more social creatures and had higher populations overall. Due to the cognitive revolution, it is thought that humans were more cunning than the other hominins. Also, humans brought newer and more refined technology like the atlatl (a device used to throw spears at a greater distance and power) that enabled them to overpower the Neanderthals. Even if there was no conflict, the superior tactics and large group sizes of Homo sapiens ensured that there was no room – or prey – for our cousins.
30,000 years ago, the last Neanderthals disappeared. However, they’re not the only species that have gone extinct at our hands. During the late Ice Age, humans hunted many megafauna (really large animals) to extinction, such as saber-tooth cats, mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, woolly rhinos, Irish elk, and more (totaling up to 178 species extinct). Even now, many species are going extinct thanks to Homo sapiens.
On a more cheerful note, next time we’ll talk about why the Agricultural Revolution actually may have transformed the majority of people’s lives for the worse and how, in author Yuval Noah Harari’s words, “wheat domesticated us.“
Anay Ganesh 