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Modern humans, or Homo sapiens, are the only living Homo species. But we haven't always been alone.

In the 19th century, when it began to be understood that the human being was a species that emerged like the others from a process of biological evolution, an expression made its way: the "missing link", the ape-man who was supposed to connect Homo sapiens with the apes; like a sticker that was missing to stick in our family album.

In recent Evolution News articles (Bechly 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2018), I have commented on paleoanthropological discoveries that overturned the cherished out-of-Africa scenario. Now, the rewriting of the story of human evolution continues with undampened enthusiasm. In a special report series, “Rewriting human evolution,” the journal New Scientist featured an article “Who are you? How the story of human origins is being rewritten” (Barras 2017) reviewing a lot of this modern research. This summer the article “Asia’s mysterious role in the early origins of humanity” (Douglas 2018a) was appropriately added to the series, because indeed many of the revolutionary new discoveries were made in China and the Indian subcontinent.

Ancient tools and bones unearthed in China suggest our early hominid ancestors left Africa and arrived in Asia 270,000 years earlier than previously thought.

In a 2016 interview with CNN, Anthony Scaramucci — President Donald Trump's new White House communications director — said that Earth, as well as human history, is just 5,500 years old. But ample evidence exists to prove that the world has been around for much, much longer.

As the sole surviving species of the genus Homo, we Homo sapiens are one of the most taxonomically lonely species living on Earth today. But dig back a few thousand years or more and we find ourselves with plenty of company: Many now-extinct species shared the genus Homo, ranging from the robust Homo neanderthalensis, to the hobbit-like Homo floresiensis to the more primitive Homo habilis and Homoerectus. But do all these species, with their wide diversity of physical and cultural traits, actually belong in the same genus?

A 2.8-million-year-old jawbone fossil with five intact teeth unearthed in an Ethiopian desert is pushing back the dawn of humankind by about half a million years.