Researcher also wondered: If these other kinds of humans were not so different, did our ancestors have sex with them?įor some, the mixing was hard to imagine. A study last week found early humans were building structures with wood before H. Neanderthals painted cave walls, Homo heidelbergensis hunted large animals like rhinos and hippos, and some scientists think even the small-brained Homo naledi was burying its dead in South African cave systems. Instead, they were more like our cousins: lineages that split off from a common source and headed in different directions.Īrchaeological finds have shown some of them had complex behaviors.

Scientists started to realize all these hominins weren’t our direct ancestors.