There have been some discoveries which expanded our understanding of human evolution as the analysis of DNA has advanced to give more details of ancestry.
We have now identified the genes from cross breeding with other Hominid species in particular geographically spread human populations.
Namely the discoveries of a small percentage of Neanderthal genes in European population, and some Denisovan genes in Asiatic populations.
There never was a “first Homo sapiens”! Branching specialization is a slow shift of allée frequency in diverse populations through several generations.
While both mutation and evolution are on-going processes, there is not likely to be much change in the human physique or intellectual capabilities in the last ten thousand years.
Some populations have become more tolerant to certain foods, while the digestive systems of other populations are upset by allergic reactions.
There is evidence for interbreeding between archaic and modern humans during the Middle Paleolithic and early Upper Paleolithic.
The interbreeding happened in several independent events that included Neanderthals and Denisovans, as well as several unidentified hominids.
In Eurasia, interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans with modern humans took place several times.
The introgression events into modern humans is estimated to have happened about 47,000–65,000 years ago with Neanderthals and about 44,000–54,000 years ago with Denisovans.
By Public Library of Science - Cro-Magnons Conquered Europe, but Left Neanderthals Alone"From PLOS ONE, an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited."© 2004 Public Library of Science. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.", CC BY 2.5, File:Reconstruction of Neanderthal woman.jpg
A model of the phylogeny of H. sapiens over the last 600,000 years (vertical axis). The horizontal axis represents geographic location; the vertical axis represents time in thousands of years ago
By Dbachmann - Own work (sources used cited in description; see also: [2][3]), CC BY-SA 4.0, File:Homo sapiens lineage.svg
Homo heidelbergensis is shown as diverging into Neanderthals, Denisovans and H. sapiens.
With the expansion of H. sapiens after 200 kya, Neanderthals, Denisovans and unspecified archaic African hominins are displayed as again subsumed into the H. sapiens lineage.
Possible admixture events involving certain modern populations in Africa are also shown.
Neanderthal-derived DNA was found in the genome of contemporary populations in Europe and Asia. It accounted for 1–4% of modern genomes, although estimates may vary.
Neanderthal-derived ancestry is absent from most modern populations in sub-Saharan Africa
while Denisovan-derived ancestry is absent from modern populations in Western Eurasia and A