How Homo Sapiens Conquered the World and Destroyed All Rivals

Not so long ago — by the standards of human history — we were not alone. At least three humanities existed on Earth simultaneously: sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. They had common ancestors, but hundreds of thousands of years of evolution scattered them across different parts of the Old World. Neanderthals settled the west of Eurasia, Denisovans the east, while the ancestors of modern humans remained in Africa for a long time. Who were these people? What could they do? How different were they from each other? Where did they meet, what did they learn from each other? Why, despite the enormous distances between them, do archaeologists find surprising cultural similarities? And then the balance was disrupted. In the Middle East, sapiens develop new technologies and weapons. The Upper Paleolithic begins. Sapiens increasingly venture beyond Africa, penetrate into Asia and Europe — and gradually a world inhabited by different species of humans turns into a world of one humanity. Why did the Neanderthals and Denisovans disappear? Was it due to the technological superiority of sapiens, demography, climate, chance — or all of it at once? And did the other humanities really disappear, if part of their DNA still lives within us? Alexander Markov will tell this story as a scientific detective. We will assemble the picture of the past literally from grains of information — bones, stone tools, campsites, and fragments of ancient DNA. And we will see how discoveries by archaeologists and paleogeneticists are right now changing our understanding of how sapiens became the last people on Earth. When: November 29 at 20:00 Where: Stand up lokal The lecture will be held in Russian. About the speaker: Alexander Markov — Doctor of Biological Sciences, specialist in evolutionary theory, paleontologist, science popularizer, author of numerous popular science works. Listen to the KontrEvolyutsiya podcast featuring Alexander Markov about alternative scenarios of human development. Subscribe to YouTube and the Telegram channel. After purchase, a confirmation email with a QR code will be sent to your email address. If you don't see the email in your inbox, please check your "Spam" folder Please note that tickets are non-refundable, but you can always gift them to friends!