We are Homo Sapiens, and we are the last of our kind.
We might very well be the final iteration of Hominin species.
We are certainly the only surviving species in the genus Homo.
We are most likely the last surviving species in the entire genus.
Which must suggest, surely that as an evolutionary pathway, big brain/bipedalism is not particularly successful. All of the other Hominin species have gone extinct, and now we are extincting ourselves... Arguably, not that good.
The period with the most hominid species alive at the same time was around 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, when at least nine different human species coexisted, including Homo Sapiens, Homo Neanderthalensis, and Denisovans, among others. The map of human diversity was much more complex than the single species (that's us - Homo Sapiens) that exists today, though the exact number, timescales and overlap of species is still a subject of scientific study and debate. What is however, undeniable is that they are all gone.
The most recent period when multiple hominid species coexisted was the Late Pleistocene, around 100,000 to 40,000 years ago, a time when Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans inhabited parts of Eurasia, with evidence of interbreeding among them - we still carry some of their DNA in our genome today - mmm ancestral DNA... We're all descended from a bunch of monkey-shaggers. - The power of our ancestry lives within us! Yeh, that ain't gonna save you.
Around 50,000 to 67,000 years ago, a few even smaller hominins like the Indonesian Homo Floresiensis and the recently proposed Homo Luzonensis of the Philippines - it's really not very easy to distinguish between what is and what isn't an actual different species - also lived concurrently with other human species. So as recently as 40,000 years ago, there may have been as many as five different hominid species all coexisting concurrently. That's not that long ago, archeologically speaking.
When we finally extinct ourselves, Nature will literally have to go back to the Great Apes, and begin again... Yus!! Planet Of The Apes was real! Unless we extinct all of them on our way out the door...
Even if we can survive our own self-inflicted socio-pathological implosion, we have absolutely no defence against one really good solid asteroid or solar flare. Zero. None.
Has all of this happened before? Yup. Many, many, many times long before we got here with our bipedalism and big heads... Maybe not to our entire genus, specifically - yet. But we definitely ain't the first, and we won't be the last full genus to go extinct. Evidence for the prosecution your honour? I give you the dinosaurs m'lud.
Will it happen again? Yup. We are just the latest in a continuing evolutionary process that will go on for another 5 to 10 billion years, and then the sun will torch everything here.
What will replace us in the evolutionary continuum? Dunno. But I bet they look back at us and think "What a dumb bunch of .... !"
Goodbye Earth.
Goodbye Homo.
Thanks for the ride.
Dang, we didn't even make it quarter of the way round the galaxy....
Cheers y'all,
Los Dave
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