Welcome to Asia, with over four billion people living here it’s the most densely populated continent in the world.
It was also the first new continent to be colonized by Homo sapiens as our species went global.
Newly discovered stone tools and ancient human fossils are re-writing the story of when and how people migrated here.
41,000 years ago:
The Denisova Cave was home to the Denisovans—it’s also the only shelter ever found to have housed three different species of human.
35,000–30,000 years ago:
A gene known as EDAR-1 takes hold in East Asians, spreading widely throughout the population, and giving carriers straight, thick hair.
30,000 years ago:
Having evolved in Africa and spread across Asia and the Southeast, the archaic human known as Homo erectus becomes extinct.
13,000 years ago:
In 2003, potential but so far unconfirmed evidence of a late-surviving line of Homo erectus turns up on the Indonesian island Flores, Southeast Asia.
