How well do we know ourselves? The fossil record of hominins, our ancestors and closest kin, is limited, and the exploration of our collective deep history through genetic analysis is still a relatively new field. Neither excavations nor lab work has been able to reconstruct, definitively, the earliest chapter of the Homo sapiensstory.
For decades, two competing models of human evolution have dominated the field. One claims that H. sapiensevolved in a single place, Africa, and left that continent only fairly recently; the other suggests that our species evolved in multiple regions across both Africa and Eurasia.