Homo Sapiens and Other Hominins

There’s a misconception among a lot of us Homo sapiens that we and our direct ancestors are the only humans ever to have walked the planet. But as it turns out, the emergence of our kind wasn’t that simple. The whole story of human evolution is messy, and the more we look into the matter, the messier it becomes.

Paleoanthropologists have discovered as many as 27 different human species. These hominins, human-like hominids, diverged after our lineage split from a common ancestor we shared with chimps about 7 million years ago.