Homo sapiens have been around for about 300,000 years. Often, our big brains and intelligence are credited with making us the most successful species to have ever walked on Earth, but that isn’t entirely true. There was another species of human that survived on this very same planet for nearly 2 million years, which was the grandparent of so many other human species, including us. They explored new continents. They mastered tools. They may have controlled fire. And they did it all with a brain barely half the size of ours. Enter Homo erectus, a species that may force us to confront an uncomfortable possibility… that intelligence alone isn’t what makes a species successful.
Read more: How Homo naledi is changing what we know about death
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