The world was already full of strange and wonderful humanlike species, their evolutionary cousins: Neanderthals in Europe, Denisovans in central Asia, relict populations of Homo erectus in Asia, an erectus-like species in southern Africa called Homo naledi, and a miniaturized species called Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the Hobbit by paleoanthropologists, in the islands of Indonesia. The modern science fiction fantasy of meeting some almost-human in a distant realm, communicating, living with them, played out again and again in Paleolithic wilderness.
