The Family Bush

Multiple hominin species coexisted for most of our evolutionary history. Around 2 million years ago, at least three Homo species lived in Africa alongside two robust Australopithecine species. They shared landscapes, likely competed for resources, and may have occasionally interbred. The idea of one species neatly replacing another is a myth.

Homo naledi, found in 2013 in South Africa's Rising Star Cave and announced as a new species in 2015, had a brain one-third the size of ours yet was found deep underground in a chamber that is extremely hard to reach. Researchers have proposed that it deliberately placed its dead there — a claim that remains hotly debated, since critics argue natural processes could explain the bones. Either way, evolution does not follow a script, and a small brain need not mean simple behavior.