The World Before Us: When 9 Species Walked the Earth | Documentary for Sleep

300,000 years ago, the Earth was crowded with humans. Neanderthals ruled Ice Age Europe. Denisovans adapted to extreme mountains. Homo erectus kept walking across continents. On remote islands, tiny humans like Homo floresiensis—the real “hobbits”—survived for hundreds of thousands of years. And deep in South Africa’s caves, Homo naledi left behind one of the strangest mysteries in paleoanthropology.

In this calm, sleep-friendly documentary, we trace the last era of human diversity—how at least nine different human species (and possible “ghost” lineages) shared the planet, how they lived, how they overlapped, and why almost all of them vanished. Along the way, we explore the small-brain paradox, the survival of island species, and the genetic truth that modern humans are not “pure” at all—because Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA still lives inside many of us today.

This is a slow, quiet journey through deep time—designed to relax you, but grounded in real anthropology, archaeology, and ancient DNA research.

00:00 The Lost World: Earth 300,000 Years Ago
03:49 The Definition: What Actually Makes Us Human?
06:01 The First Traveler: Homo Erectus
14:03 he Forgotten Ancestor: Homo Heidelbergensis
23:30 Peak Diversity: When the Earth Was Crowded
31:47 Masters of the Ice: The Neanderthals
43:23 Ghosts of the Mountains: The Denisovans
54:30 The Real Hobbits: Homo Floresiensis
1:05:16 The Island Mystery: Homo Luzonensis
1:14:31 The Intelligence Paradox
1:24:36 Rituals in the Dark: Homo Naledi
1:34:48 Survival of the Smallest
1:46:01 The Hybrid Story: We Are All Mixed
1:57:04 The Great Vanishing: Why Did They Disappear?
2:07:44 The Sole Survivor: Homo Sapiens
2:18:11 Living Ghosts: Archaic DNA in Us
2:28:32 Conclusion: The Lonely Planet

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