For most of human history, we were not alone.

In Episode Seven, we meet the ghosts—our extinct human relatives who once shared this planet with us. Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and others were not failed prototypes or evolutionary dead ends. They were successful human species, each with its own intelligence, technologies, cultures, and ways of being in the world.

For millions of years, humanity was not a single story but a crowded conversation.

This episode explores the lost world that almost was: a planet where multiple kinds of humans hunted, crafted tools, cared for their dead, made art, mastered fire, and adapted to environments that would challenge even us. Our ancestors were just one branch among many—remarkable, yes, but not inevitable.

One by one, these other humans vanished. Some fell to climate shifts, some to ecological pressure, some perhaps to competition or assimilation. Many disappeared for reasons we may never fully understand. Their extinction was not destiny—it was contingency, timing, and chance.

We carry their echoes in our genes and in the unanswered questions they left behind. Their absence is the reason our world feels singular today.

This episode confronts a humbling truth:

we are not the pinnacle of human evolution—we are the remainder.

The survivors of a lineage-wide narrowing so severe that only one version of humanity made it through.

And that survival was anything but guaranteed.