ABSTRACT
About two million years ago, more advanced humans evolved in tropical Africa, and spread out of Africa into Southeast Asia about 1.8 million years before present. Known generically as Homo erectus, these archaic humans adapted to much colder environments. They were successful big-game hunters and foragers, and ultimately the ancestors of the Neanderthals, the best known archaic humans, who appear in Europe around 400,000 years ago. Important advances in DNA research have revealed the diversity of Neanderthal populations, among them the Denisovans of Eurasia. Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared in North Africa by 300,000 years ago and were widespread in topical Africa by 150,000 BP. By 70,000 years ago, small Homo sapiens populations with all the cognitive abilities of modern humans had spread from Africa to South Asia, and the Middle East—the dates are controversial.
