note on the origin of human beings Related: Revision Notes - From the...
Human evolution began in Africa around 7 million years ago when a now extinct ancestral ape population split and gave rise to the chimpanzee family tree, and the hominin or human family tree due to climatic and geological activity.
Most human species lived in Africa, many of which lived at the same time, and the same places between 7 million and 1 million years ago (give or take). Not all of the African species evolved into Homo sapiens. Some were just evolutionary offshoots that went completely extinct. There were many species that belonged to various genuses such as Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Kenyanthropus, and our own genus, Homo. Most of the African fossils have been found within and near the Great Rift Valley in East Africa in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. But others have also been discovered in countries such as Chad, South Africa, Zambia, and Morocco.
There were also several Out of Africa migrations that occurred.
The first was around 1.9 million years ago with Homo erectus (or the African variant of Homo erectus known as Homo ergaster) migrating into Asia and Europe, where in Europe they evolved into Homo antecessor around 800,000 years ago, and in Asia remained as Homo erectus (or if one subscribes to the proposal that Homo ergaster was a completely different species from erectus, then it was ergaster that evolved into erectus in Asia). The population of Homo erectus/Homo ergaster that stayed behind in Africa evolved into Homo heidelbergensis
Homo heidelbergensis migrated out of Africa around 600,000 years ago. This species migrated into Europe, in which that population evolved into the Neanderthals, and in Asia where that population evolved into the Denisovans. The heidelbergensis populations that stayed behind in Africa evolved into our species, Homo sapiens, between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa between 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, and along the way, interbred with the Neanderthals, the Denisovans, and perhaps with many other as yet unknown human species both outside and within Africa based on DNA evidence.
But as diverse as the human family tree is/was, it’s just one part of the interconnected on-growing 4 billion year old evolutionary tree of life.