Homo sapiens

That view shifted when researchers analysed 51 fossil teeth from a range of hominids and great apes, including Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus, early Homo, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens.

For decades, experts believed that Homo sapiens reached Europe mainly by traveling through the Balkans and the Levant, moving from Africa into the Middle East.

A million-year-old human skull found in China suggests that our species, Homo sapiens, began to emerge at least half a million years earlier than we thought, researchers are claiming in a new study.

The research for the first time pinpoints a short period 48,000 years ago when Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals after leaving Africa, after which they went on to expand into the wider world.

“Homo sapiens is a unique species in that our vastly superior intelligence does not seem, in the majority of individuals at least, to inhibit irrational destruction of its own species,” dos Santos told Salon.