Harvard University hosted a lecture on March 25 in which Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin explored the transition from a world inhabited by multiple human species to one dominated by Homo sapiens.
The event, part of the Hallam L. Movius, Jr. Lecture Series at the Peabody Museum, highlighted recent research that challenges traditional views about human evolution. Instead of a straightforward replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans, evidence now points to extended interactions and interbreeding between different hominid groups.
Hublin, who is affiliated with the Collège de France and is an emeritus professor at the Max Planck Society, referenced Hallam Movius’s pioneering work on Paleolithic tools as a foundation for understanding ancient population distributions. “If you look at the evolution of paleolithic industries throughout the Old World, you have very different stories depending on what part of the world you are,” Hublin said.
He explained that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were distinct species despite being separated by only 800,000 to one million years. Their skeletal differences are more pronounced than those between chimpanzees and bonobos. The two species initially lived in separate regions: Neanderthals across Europe into Asia and Homo sapiens in Africa before migrating northward.
Hublin noted that more than 40,000 years ago multiple hominids coexisted in Eurasia—including Denisovans alongside Neanderthals—while modern humans evolved separately in Africa. He described their eventual convergence as “the most spectacular event in hominid evolution of the last million years and arguably the most important event of the whole human evolution.”
Genetic evidence supports ongoing contact between these groups dating back over 250,000 years. “We know from ancient DNA that there were already contacts probably more than 250,000 or 300,000 years ago,” said Hublin. Mitochondrial DNA found in later Neanderthal genomes indicates interbreeding with early modern humans through maternal lineages—a process he called hybridizing—which likely occurred several times rather than once.
Technological advances also provide clues about these interactions. Distinctive stone tools help identify populations; while European Neanderthal sites feature “shapeless flakes,” areas settled by Homo sapiens display sharpened stones possibly used as projectiles for hunting.
New methods developed at University of York allow researchers to extract peptides from bone collagen using mass spectrometry to distinguish species-specific traits even from fragmentary remains. These findings reveal periods when both populations coexisted—sometimes separated geographically but occasionally intermingling or coming into conflict—as evidenced by genetic data and archaeological remains.
Hublin concluded that this complex history means many people today carry traces of Neanderthal ancestry: “So most people in this room have about 2 percent DNA of Neanderthal origin.”
The lecture underscores how advances in genetics and archaeology continue to reshape our understanding of human origins.
