Palaeontology

Newly identified species of human may have been more intelligent than us

By T.K. Randall
December 2, 2024 ·  27 comments

We now know of multiple distinct human species. Image Credit: Pixabay / Jackdrafahl Could we have once lived alongside another species of human that was more intelligent than us ?

That is the possibility raised by the recent discovery that certain fossils previously thought to have belonged to other species were actually those of an entirely new group of ancient humans.

These have since come to be named Homo juluensis (or "large head people").

As the name suggests, these ancient humans, who roamed what is now China, had a significantly larger head and brain size than any other human species - including ourselves - raising the possibility that they may have been more intelligent than even we are today.

Scientists believe that they likely hunted horses and other animals in small groups.Little else, however, is known about these mysterious humans.

If they were more intelligent than we are - why did they go extinct and we didn't ?

Could they be a hybrid of two or more other species of human ?

"It is becoming increasingly clear that [in] the eastern Asian hominin fossils... a greater degree of morphological variation is present than originally assumed or anticipated," the study authors wrote.

"If anything, the eastern Asian record is prompting us to recognize just how complex human evolution is more generally and really forcing us to revise and rethink our interpretations of various evolutionary models to better match the growing fossil record."

Source: Science Alert | Comments (27)

Tags: Human, Ancestor