It sounds like the plot of a Tolkien-inspired fantasy novel. But according to the current scientific consensus, this is actually our shared history: For most of the last 100,000 years, we were not alone. There were Homo sapiens, of course — our forefathers’ forefathers — but there were also “the others.”
Nowadays, modern humans are the only game in town. There are still chimpanzees and bonobos, but all the other walking-upright primates have gone extinct. The last Neanderthal vanished about 40,000 years ago; the last Denisovan 50,000 years ago. These are just educated guesses, however. There’s some evidence that smaller, isolated pockets of Neanderthals survived until 25,000 years ago, and the Denisovans might’ve persevered in New Guinea until just 15,000 years ago — and are still remembered in folklore and oral traditions. We just don’t have enough physical evidence to prove it.
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