Homininsthe evolutionary tree from Sahelanthropus to sapiens

Which hominins existed, and when? This page sums up the game's hominin entries and the fossil research behind them, from Sahelanthropus to Homo sapiens.

Humans did not evolve along a straight line. We come from a tree with many branches. The game lists fourteen hominins, from "Toumaï", a skull about 7 million years old found in Chad, to Homo sapiens, the species every living person belongs to. This page lines them up in time order, then covers fossils, stone tools, the use of fire and ancient genomes, the kinds of evidence scientists used to piece this tree together bit by bit.

Fourteen members

Member	Time clue	In one line
Sahelanthropus	About 7 million years ago	The skull "Toumaï". Possibly one of the earliest hominins after the human and chimpanzee lines split.
Ardipithecus	4.4 million years ago	"Ardi" could walk upright on the ground, yet her toes could still grip branches.
Australopithecus	About 3.2 million years ago	"Lucy" stood about 1.1 meters tall, with a brain about the size of a chimpanzee's, but already walked upright.
Paranthropus	Extinct about 1.2 million years ago	Had huge molars and a sagittal crest on top of the skull. A distant cousin of humans.
Homo habilis	—	The name means "handy man". Once thought to be the first toolmaker.
Homo erectus	Lasted about 1.9 million years	The first humans to leave Africa. "Peking Man" belongs to Homo erectus.
Homo naledi	About 300,000 to 230,000 years ago	Small brain. In 2013, more than 1,500 fossils were found deep in a South African cave.
Homo heidelbergensis	About 600,000 years ago	May be the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens.
Homo floresiensis	—	Humans about 1 meter tall on the Indonesian island of Flores, nicknamed "the hobbit".
Homo luzonensis	At least 50,000 years ago	A small-bodied human found on Luzon in the Philippines in 2019.
Neanderthals	—	Used fire, made complex tools and buried their dead.
Denisovans	—	First identified from the DNA in a single finger bone.
Harbin skull	Found in 1933	Named "Dragon Man" in 2021. A 2025 study showed it belongs to the Denisovans.
Homo sapiens	About 300,000 years	Fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. Everyone alive today belongs to this one species.

Standing up

Walking upright is the earliest hallmark of hominins. The Taung Child skull of 1925 showed that our ancestors came from Africa and learned to walk upright first, with the brain growing bigger later (Dart, Nature, 1925). A line of footprints left in volcanic ash proves that early humans were already walking upright more than 3.6 million years ago (Leakey and Hay, Nature, 1979). Australopithecus afarensis, the species "Lucy" belongs to, then got a firm place on the human evolutionary tree (Johanson and White, Science, 1979).

Tools and fire

The oldest stone tools are older than the genus Homo, which shows that toolmakers were not necessarily "human" (Harmand et al., Nature, 2015). This is also why the table says Homo habilis was only "once thought" to be the first toolmaker. The ashes and burned bones in Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa are evidence that early humans used fire inside the cave (Berna et al., PNAS, 2012).

Ancient genomes: a story of mixing

Neanderthals: After the Neanderthal genome was sequenced, it turned out that all modern humans outside Africa carry a small part of their DNA (Green et al., Science, 2010). About 2% of the genomes of people outside Africa today comes from Neanderthals.
Denisovans: From the DNA in a single finger bone, a group of ancient humans previously unknown was discovered (Reich et al., Nature, 2010). The EPAS1 gene variant that helps Tibetans adapt to high altitude came from Denisovans.
Mitochondrial Eve: The mitochondrial DNA of all modern humans can be traced back to one woman who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago (Cann, Stoneking and Wilson, Nature, 1987).

Dart (1925): "Australopithecus africanus: The man-ape of South Africa"
Leakey and Hay (1979): "Pliocene footprints in the Laetolil Beds at Laetoli, northern Tanzania"
Harmand et al. (2015): "3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya"
Green et al. (2010): "A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome"
Reich et al. (2010): "Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia"
Hublin et al. (2017): "New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens"

Real basis

Sahelanthropus: The skull “Toumaï” from Chad, about 7 million years old, may be one of the earliest hominins after the split from chimpanzees.
Ardipithecus: Ardi, 4.4 million years ago, could walk upright on the ground yet still had toes that could grip branches.
Australopithecus: The famous Lucy lived about 3.2 million years ago, stood about 1.1 m tall and had a brain about the size of a chimpanzee's, yet already walked upright.
Paranthropus: With huge molars and a sagittal crest on top of the skull, it lived on tough plants. A distant cousin of ours, it died out about 1.2 million years ago.
Homo habilis: The name means “handy man”, and it was once thought to be the first maker of stone tools.
Homo naledi: In 2013, over 1,500 fossils were found deep in a narrow cave in South Africa; the brains were small, yet they lived about 300,000 to 230,000 years ago.
Homo erectus: The first humans to leave Africa, existing for about 1.9 million years. “Peking Man” of Zhoukoudian near Beijing belongs to Homo erectus.
Homo floresiensis: Humans about 1 m tall on the Indonesian island of Flores, nicknamed “hobbits”, possibly the result of island dwarfism.
Homo luzonensis: A small human species found in 2019 on Luzon in the Philippines, living there at least 50,000 years ago.
Homo heidelbergensis: Humans of about 600,000 years ago, possibly the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens.
Neanderthals: They used fire, made complex tools and buried their dead. About 2% of the genomes of people outside Africa today comes from Neanderthals.
Denisovans: First identified from the DNA in a single finger bone. The EPAS1 gene variant that helps Tibetans adapt to high altitude came from Denisovans.
Harbin skull: A skull found in Harbin in 1933 and named “Dragon Man” in 2021; protein and DNA studies in 2025 showed it belongs to the Denisovans.
Homo sapiens: Fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco are about 300,000 years old. Everyone alive today belongs to this one species.

Related research

These studies relate to this topic but are not direct proof of this page.

The Taung Child: A child's skull showed that human ancestors came from Africa and learned to walk upright first, with bigger brains coming later.
Source: Dart, Nature 1925, "Australopithecus africanus: The man-ape of South Africa"
Mitochondrial Eve: The mitochondrial DNA of all modern humans can be traced back to one woman in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
Source: Cann, Stoneking & Wilson, Nature 1987, "Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution"
The Neanderthal genome: After sequencing the Neanderthal genome, it turned out that modern humans outside Africa all carry a small part of their DNA.
Source: Green et al., Science 2010, "A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome"
Denisovans: From the DNA of a single finger bone, a group of ancient humans previously unknown was discovered.
Source: Reich et al., Nature 2010, "Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia"
Homo sapiens from 300,000 years ago: Fossils from Morocco pushed back the history of Homo sapiens by about 100,000 years and suggest they originated across all of Africa rather than at a single site.
Source: Hublin et al., Nature 2017, "New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens"
The oldest stone tools: These stone tools predate the genus Homo, showing that toolmakers were not necessarily “human.”
Source: Harmand et al., Nature 2015, "3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya"
Laetoli footprints: A line of footprints in volcanic ash proves that early hominins were already walking upright over 3.6 million years ago.
Source: Leakey & Hay, Nature 1979, "Pliocene footprints in the Laetolil Beds at Laetoli, northern Tanzania"
A campfire a million years ago: Ash and burned bones in Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa, are evidence that early humans used fire inside the cave.
Source: Berna et al., PNAS 2012, "Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave"
The oldest cave painting: A painting of a pig at least 45,500 years old is one of the oldest known figurative artworks.
Source: Brumm et al., Science Advances 2021, "Oldest cave art found in Sulawesi"
The language gene: The FOXP2 gene linked to language underwent special changes in the human lineage.
Source: Enard et al., Nature 2002, "Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language"
Lucy's family: Johanson and White placed Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy's species, on the human evolutionary tree.
Source: Johanson & White, Science 1979, "A systematic assessment of early African hominids"

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