from
http://www.nature.com/news/how-china-is-rewriting-the-book-on-human-origins-1.20231


Evolving story

In its typical form, the story of Homo sapiens starts in Africa. The exact
details vary from one telling to another, but the key characters and events
generally remain the same. And the title is always 'Out of Africa'.

In this standard view of human evolution, H. erectus first evolved there
more than 2 million years ago (see 'Two routes for human evolution'). Then,
some time before 600,000 years ago, it gave rise to a new species:
Homo heidelbergensis, the oldest remains of which have been found in
Ethiopia. About 400,000 years ago, some members of H. heidelbergensis
left Africa and split into two branches: one ventured into the Middle
East and Europe, where it evolved into Neanderthals; the other went east,
where members became Denisovans — a group first discovered in Siberia in
2010. The remaining population of H. heidelbergensis in Africa eventually
evolved into our own species, H. sapiens, about 200,000 years ago. Then
these early humans expanded their range to Eurasia 60,000 years ago, where
they replaced local hominins with a minuscule amount of interbreeding.