Revisiting the Evolution of Human Species: New Data and Insights.

A new study challenges the widely held theory that modern humans originated from a single region of Africa. The study suggests that humans arose from multiple ancestral populations around the continent, which lived more than one million years ago and were the same hominin species but genetically slightly different. The study used new software and genomic sequencing data from current African and European populations, as well as Neanderthal DNA, to support the theory of multiple origins. The study also proposes a "weakly structured stem" explanation for human evolution, which is more like a tangled vine than a "tree of life."