“Homo erectus spread from Africa to western Asia, then east Asia and Indonesia. Its presence in Europe is uncertain, but it gave rise to Homo antecessor, found in Spain.”
“Homo heidelbergensis originated from Homo erectus in an unknown location and dispersed across Africa, southern Asia and southern Europe.”
“Homo sapiens spread from Africa to western Asia and then to Europe and southern Asia, eventually reaching Australia and the Americas.”
“After early modern humans left Africa around 60,000 years ago (top right), they spread across the globe and interbred with other descendants of Homo heidelbergensis,” namely Neanderthals, Denisovans, and unknown archaic African hominins.
Chances are when you ask Google such a question, something like this will come up:
Most scientists think that Neanderthals probably evolved in Europe from African ancestors. The consensus now is that modern humans and Neanderthals shared a common ancestor in Africa about 700,000 years ago. The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa first, expanding to the Near East and then to Europe and Central Asia.
Mind you: This is from The New York Times and far from proven.
But is this truly the case?
My thoughts:
Let’s gather some facts!
Pre- and early Neanderthals, living before the Eemian interglacial (130,000 years ago), are poorly known and come mostly from Western European sites. From 130,000 years ago onwards, the quality of the fossil record increases dramatically with classic Neanderthals, who are recorded from Western, Central, Eastern, and Mediterranean Europe, as well as Southwest, Central, and Northern Asia up to the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia. Pre- and early Neanderthals, on the other hand, seem to have continuously occupied only France, Spain, and Italy, although some appear to have moved out of this “core-area” to form temporary settlements eastward (although without leaving Europe). Nonetheless, southwestern France has the highest density of sites for pre-, early, and classic Neanderthals.
Although nDNA confirms that Neanderthals and Denisovans are more closely related to each other than they are to modern humans, Neanderthals and modern humans share a more recent maternally-transmitted mtDNA common ancestor, possibly due to interbreeding between Denisovans and some unknown human species. The 400,000-year-old Neanderthal-like humans from Sima de los Huesos in northern Spain, looking at mtDNA, are more closely related to Denisovans than Neanderthals. Several Neanderthal-like fossils in Eurasia from a similar time period are often grouped into H. heidelbergensis, of which some may be relict populations of earlier humans, which could have interbred with Denisovans. This is also used to explain an approximately 124,000 year old German Neanderthal specimen with mtDNA that diverged from other Neanderthals (except for Sima de los Huesos) about 270,000 years ago, while its genomic DNA indicated divergence less than 150,000 years ago.
Sequencing of the genome of a Denisovan from Denisova Cave has shown that 17% of its genome derives from Neanderthals. This Neanderthal DNA more closely resembled that of a 120,000-year-old Neanderthal bone from the same cave than that of Neanderthals from Vindija Cave, Croatia, or Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Caucasus, suggesting that interbreeding was local.
For the 90,000-year-old Denisova 11, it was found that her father was a Denisovan related to more recent inhabitants of the region, and her mother a Neanderthal related to more recent European Neanderthals at Vindija Cave, Croatia. Given how few Denisovan bones are known, the discovery of a first-generation hybrid indicates interbreeding was very common between these species, and Neanderthal migration across Eurasia likely occurred sometime after 120,000 years ago.