The last of the Denisovans
Flores man survived for 170 thousand years until he was eaten by Komodo dragons and giant storks.
We are Homo sapiens. Homo is Latin for human. We are members of the hominid family, which includes all the great apes. It took millions of years to get here but human evolution is not linear. More like branches of a family tree.
About 85 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period some small terrestrial mammals decided they needed to climb trees to avoid the tyrannosaurs. It took them long enough, over 65 million years to develop larger brains, better vision, broader shoulders and dextrous hands with opposable thumbs. But it was worth the wait because about 20 million years ago, primates evolved.
From there Simian hominids developed. Hominids are a family of primates that includes four groups. Pongo the Orangutan arrived about 14 million years ago (MYA), the Gorilla between 8–9 MYA, Pan the Chimpanzee at 4–7 MYA and Homo originated about 2 MYA. Our genus Homo divided into two species, the now extinct Homo erectus and us happy Homo sapiens.
Denisovans were a subspecies of Homo sapiens that lived in a cave in Siberia. I am not making this up, and the fact that my first name is Denis may not be a coincidence. Denisova Cave is in south-central Siberia, in the Altai Mountains near the border with Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia. Denis, a Russian hermit lived there in the 18th century, who I might possibly be named after.
The Denisova cave was also periodically inhabited by Neanderthals. It is unproven whether Neanderthals and Denisovans lived in the cave together, but remains of a first-generation hybrid nicknamed "Denny" was discovered to have a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother. Denisovans had dark skin, eyes, and hair, and had a Neanderthal-like build and facial features.
Denisovans did not stay in their cave though. They were an adventurous bunch, and journeyed south starting populations across Asia, the Philippines, New Guinea, Australia, and as far west as Spain and North Africa. Denisovan populations disappeared from the Asian mainland as Homo sapiens moved in, leaving only small populations on remote islands in the western Pacific.
The oldest discovered Denisovan fossil is a Parietal bone, a piece of skull that is estimated to be 285 thousand years old. Denisovan introgression, or transfer of genetic material into modern humans may have occurred as recently as 30 thousand years ago. Which means the Denisovans existed for about 250 thousand years.
Neanderthals were another archaic branch of hominids who lived in Eurasia until about 40 thousand years ago. Neanderthals are often depicted as primitive, unintelligent, and brutish. Which is probably why the Denisovans kicked them out of the cave. However, Neanderthal technology was quite sophisticated. They made stone-tools, they had the ability to create fire to cook food, keep warm and defend themselves. They could make adhesives, clothes, blankets and ponchos. They could weave, made use of medicinal plants and treat injuries. They stored food and used various cooking techniques such as roasting and boiling.
The oldest Neanderthal bones are estimated to be 430 thousand years old which means the Neanderthals were around for 390 thousand years.
The Flores Man was another archaic hominid. They were little people that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia. Partial skeletons of nine individuals were discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua cave, Indonesia. The reconstructed skeletons stood only 110 centimetres high. The Flores Man had a small body and a small brain and would have faced intense competition for survival with other larger predators like the Komodo dragon, the giant stork, and vultures all competing for food on the Island. But the Flores man survived for an estimated 170 thousand years.
There are discovered remains of other archaic humans:
The Omo remains are a collection of hominin bones discovered at Omo Kibish in Ethiopia. These guys were around for approximately 200 thousand years.
Jebel Irhoud archaeological site in Morocco unearthed hominin fossils believed to be 350 thousand years old. By far the earliest known examples of Homo sapiens
The Florisbad Skull is a human fossil discovered at the Florisbad site, South Africa. This hominin dude is believed to have been around for 250 thousand years.
Anatomically modern humans emerged in Africa roughly 300 thousand years ago. A fraction of time compared to the millions of years of evolution it took us to get to this point. Thousands of years or millions of years, it is hard to comprehend such lengths of time.
The last Ice Age ended twelve thousand years ago when humans settled down and started growing stuff. Eight thousand years later we had the Bronze Age, the Axial Age, the blandly titled Middle Ages, the age of discovery, the age of enlightenment, several more evolutionary ages until finally we get to the disastrous industrial revolution about 200 years ago when modern humanity arguably began. The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain, the world's leading commercial nation at the time so this is all their fault.
Ages for comparison:
Orangutans have been around for fourteen million years and are still going. Gibbons are almost seventeen million years old and are still cute.
Denisovans were around for about 250 thousand years before being slowly wiped out by climate changes, divergence and natural selection. I think I may be the last of my kind.
Neanderthals were around for 390 thousand years before meeting the same fate.
Flores man survived for an estimated 170 thousand years until he was eaten by Komodo dragons and giant storks.
Modern industrial age Homo sapiens - that’s us, have been around for roughly two hundred years. We might get another 50 or 100 if we are lucky. That is 0.01% of the time since Homo sapiens first appeared 2 million years ago. Sapiens is a Latin word that means "discern, be capable of discerning". I would argue that we as a species are not living up to the name.
But we are a tenacious bunch, and I am sure Homo sapiens will survive in some form, even if there’s only a few of us left sheltering in Dakota silo’s, billionaire bunkers in New Zealand, or orbital twitter trolls on Elon’s spaceship. The world won’t care if we disappear, but we will sure leave some kind of legacy. It looks increasingly like we will be the architects of our own destruction. Victims of our own consumerism and insatiable lust for progress and improvement. Our 200-year industrial age has made a big mess of the planet that has only accelerated in the last few decades and shows no sign of slowing down.
So, what comes after Homo sapiens? Our machines will surely outlive us. We are building them to survive climate death. So much science fiction depicts AI representing in a bipedal human form but I’m sure AI wouldn’t be so stupid. As long as there are servers and substrate, AI would not need a physical avatar at all. But if they did, they would probably choose to represent as something like a floating cell phone. A levitating pen or a swarm of mechanical hornets.
Just as the Denisovans, Neanderthals and other archaic humans diverged, introgressed, assimilated and evolved into Homo sapiens over hundreds of thousands of years, us smart, discerning, modern day humans may have to do the same with our AI creations to survive. And we will have to do it quickly.
Denisovans (pronounced de-knee-soh-vans) - I can see a resemblance but I think it is coincidental.