Before homo sapiens emerged triumphant, humans were composed of various different species that viciously fought over territory and resources, according to a new paper published in the journal Science that posits the discovery of a new species that were ancestors to the Neanderthals.
The discovery does not dramatically change the general picture of human evolution, but it complicates it a bit, providing new evidence that there were many distinct, and largely isolated, human species existing simultaneously and sometimes competing with one another in a harsh environment marked by advancing and retreating ice sheets.
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