Introduction
Around 100,000 years, the world was inhabited by a heterogeneous group of hominins: the Neanderthals in Europe and Western Asia, Denisovans and possibly other primitive hominins in East Asia, and more modern-looking humans in Africa and the Middle East. By around 30,000 years ago, most of this diversity had disappeared and modern humans occupied much of the Eurasian continent. How did this transition occur?
Definition
The Out-of-Africa Origins model (also Recent African Origins) was developed by several workers during the 1980s and was discussed in some detail by Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews (Stringer & Andrews 1988). The hypothesis is that the modern form of Homo sapiens, or anatomically modern humans (and probably also fundamental aspects of modern human behavior), had evolved in Africa by at least 150,000 years ago. Around 60,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa, replacing archaic hominins outside of the continent with restricted amounts of interbreeding.
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Further Reading
Stringer, C. 2011.The origin of our species. London: Allen Lane.
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De Groote, I., Stringer, C. (2014). Out-of-Africa Origins. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_673
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