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Notes from the author:
Earlier in my career, when I was producing documentaries for PBS, I created a one hour show entitled Fires of the Mind. It was about the evolution of human intelligence. Some segments were shot in Tanzania and I never forgot that experience, and I always wanted to look further into how we human beings came to be the remarkable creatures we are. Homo sapiens, after all, are so essentially different from all of the world’s other creatures! By this time, I had learned something else remarkable. We aren’t the only human species to have evolved on planet Earth. In fact, at least 27 other very intelligent human species have emerged over the past seven million years, and 75,000 years ago at least five human species were living and struggling to survive at the same time: Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus and Homo Floriensis (the so called hobbits of Indonesia). I am going to guess, several more others we don’t know about were also running around. It was not clear at that time that we would emerge as the dominant species on Earth. How, I wondered, did that happen? Who were these “others?” And why did we survive when they didn’t?
Last Ape Standing tells that story.
