The Humans That Lived Before Us

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to http://to.pbs.org/DonateEons ↓ More info below ↓ As more and more fossil ancestors have been found, our genus has become more and more inclusive, incorporating more members that look less like us, Homo sapiens. By getting to know these other hominins--the ones who came before us--we can start to answer some big questions about what it essentially means to be human. Thanks as always to Nobu Tamura for allowing us to use his wonderful paleoart: http://spinops.blogspot.com/ Thanks to Julio Lacerda and Studio 252mya for the hominin illustrations. You can find more of Julio's work here: https://252mya.com/gallery/julio-lacerda Produced for PBS Digital Studios. Super special thanks to the following Patreon patrons for helping make Eons possible: Katie Fichtner, Anthony Callaghan, Renzo Caimi Ordenes, John Vanek, Neil H. Gray, Marilyn Wolmart, Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle, Gregory Donovan, Ehit Dinesh Agarwal, الخليفي سلطان , Gabriel Cortez, Marcus Lejon, Robert Arévalo, Robert Hill, Kelby Reid, Todd Dittman, Betsy Radley, PS, Colin Sylvester, Philip Slingerland, Jose Garcia, Eric Vonk, Tony Wamsley, Henrik Peteri, Jonathan Wright, Jon Monteiro, James Bording, Brad Nicholls, Miles Chaston, Michael McClellan, Jeff Graham, Maria Humphrey, Nathan Paskett, Connor Jensen, Daisuke Goto, Hubert Rady, Yuntao Zhou, Gregory Kintz, Tyson Cleary, Chandler Bass, Maly Lor, Joao Ascensao, Tsee Lee, Sarah Fritts, Ruben Winter, Ron Harvey Jr, Jacob Gerke, Alex Yan If you'd like to support the channel, head over to   / eons   and pledge for some cool rewards! Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet? Facebook -   / eonsshow   Twitter -   / eonsshow   Instagram -   / eonsshow   References: http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/h... http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/h... http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/h... http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/h... http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/h... http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/h... http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/b... http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/h... https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn... https://www.earthmagazine.org/article...   / the-plot-to-kill-homo-habilis   Antón, S. C., Potts, R., & Aiello, L. C. (2014). Evolution of early Homo: an integrated biological perspective. Science, 345(6192), 1236828. Gibbons, A. (2015). Deep roots for the genus Homo. Haile-Selassie, Y., Latimer, B. M., Alene, M., Deino, A. L., Gibert, L., Melillo, S. M., ... & Lovejoy, C. O. (2010). An early Australopithecus afarensis postcranium from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(27), 12121-12126. Leakey, L. S., Tobias, P. V., & Napier, J. R. (1964). A new species of the genus Homo from Olduvai Gorge. Schwartz, J. H., & Tattersall, I. (2015). Defining the genus Homo. Science, 349(6251), 931-932. Susman, R. L. (1994). Fossil evidence for early hominid tool use. Science, 265(5178), 1570-1573. Villmoare, B., Kimbel, W. H., Seyoum, C., Campisano, C. J., DiMaggio, E. N., Rowan, J., ... & Reed, K. E. (2015). Early Homo at 2.8 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Afar, Ethiopia. Science, 347(6228), 1352-1355. Wood, B. (1992). Origin and evolution of the genus Homo. Nature, 355(6363), 783. Wood, B. (1999). 'Homo rudolfensis' Alexeev, 1986-fact or phantom?. Journal of human evolution, 36(1), 115. Wood, B. (2014). Human evolution: Fifty years after Homo habilis. Nature News, 508(7494), 31. Wood, B., & Collard, M. (1999). The human genus. Science, 284(5411), 65-71.