There’s a murky chapter in human evolution, one that occurs right before our species entered the scene.
Over 1 million years ago our ancestors belonged to the primitive-looking species Homo erectus. Jump to 300,000 years ago and Earth is home to at least three lineages of big-brained humans: Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans. So what happened in the intervening 700,000 years?
There’s a wealth of research on H. erectus as well as modern humans and our cousins, Neanderthals and Denisovans. Much less is known about our Middle Pleistocene predecessors. Since the first specimen from the time span was reported in 1908 — a 610,000-year-old jawbone classified as Homo heidelbergensis — researchers have found Mid-Pleistocene fossils across Europe, Asia and Africa.
