There is a gradual shift among mainstream scientists who are now accepting that modern humans are the result of different contributions from ancestral populations that took place within Africa (or possibly in the Levant), archaic people different from both Neanderthals and Denisovans.
An example of the above can be found in a recent article posted two days ago by renown anthropologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, John Hawks, titled Modern humans evolved from an 80-20 mixture of two deep streams — Genome models are converging on a scenario in which two stem lineages separated 1.5 million years ago, and merged together 300,000 years ago.
In his post, Hawks looks into the different papers published over the past few years, that suggest ancient hominins admixed and the outcome was the human lineage. It is nicely written and mentions some of the research articles that I have mentioned in previous posts (like Padilla Iglesias, 2025, Mallick, 2016, Ragsdale, 2023, Rogers, 2026).
Hawks explores the suggestion that we evolved from the admixture of two archaic lineages, an event that took place 300,000 years ago. One of these groups provided 80% of our genes and the other one, 20%. He also suggests that the Homo naledi (Hawks played an important role in the discovery and analysis of this hominin) could be a possible ancestor of the older archaics because it split from our lineage around 1.5 million years ago (Mya). Other options are the Bodo and Kabwe hominins, but he points out that there is a gap in the fossils corresponding to the period spanning 1 to 1.5 Mya the date the two groups or "stems" split apart. Did they evolve "... from earlier, H. erectus-like ancestors"? or, as he suggests, (and this is very interesting) the basal ancestors were not living in Africa!
An Eurasian Origin
I will quote Hawks directly (highlighting is mine):
"A third scenario places the stem populations on different continents. Suppose that one of the stems, which gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans as well as the majority of the modern human gene pool, inhabited southwest Asia. The minority stem might then have inhabited part of East Africa or southern Africa. Putting the stem populations on different continents separated by the Sahara Desert would provide a biogeographic reason for the million-year separation of the stem populations. With low levels of gene flow like the Ragsdale model, it would be a multicontinental multiregional evolution scenario.
This scenario might fit the idea proposed by José Bermúdez de Castro and María Martinón-Torres in a 2013 paper, which proposed two “hotspots” of evolution for Pleistocene Homo, one in Southwest Asia and the other in East Africa. In their concept, the Levantine Corridor was an area with near-continuous habitation that gave rise to successive range expansions into Europe and other parts of Eurasia. Homo antecessor as represented in Spain was an early dispersal, possibly the first, and Neanderthals and Denisovans were later dispersals. The Levantine Corridor could well be the home of a Cousins-like Population A."
The suggestion of a population in the Middle East, spanning modern Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordania and probably Irak, and Saudi Arabia, is the origin of modern humans is very reasonable. That area was probably a vast refugium (or multiple refugia) safe from the rigors of harsh ice ages in northern Europe, and the desertification (for a recent paper on the climate in Eurasia see Zan, 2024) and arid conditions that prevailed for most of the Pleistocene. From there, pulses of hominins moved out, fanning into Eurasia (H. erectus, Dmanisi, the Flores Island hobbits, Homo antecessor, Neanderthals and Denisovans).
In the meantime, primitive archaics populated Africa south of the Sahara (H. naledi and H. rhodesiensis) which later admixed with modern humans, providing diversity to the African genome. Below is a map depicting this scenario.
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