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OLGA RICKARDS University of Rome Tor Vergata Our species was born in Africa recently, about 200,000 years ago, and soon after, during its dispersion in the rest of the world, it met and interbred with other now extinct hominins: the Neanderthals, the Denisovans and, presumably, also with more archaic ancestors who have not yet been given a name. These mixes should neither worry nor surprise us, because the most recent molecular data have shown that in zoology hybridization between distinct taxonomic units is a very widespread event not only in captivity but also in nature, in contact zones between species, where incomplete reproductive isolation occurs. And so even Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans, three species with distinct phylogenetic and biogeographic histories, mixed at the time of overlapping of their distribution areas and generated fertile offspring, sometimes carrying favorable and sometimes harmful genetic variants.