In the fossil record of the genus Homo, the earlier the fossils the less human they look, until the Lower Pleistocene ones merge with the apelike Australopithecus. However, there is now a controversy over the position of the Middle Pleistocene representatives: are there more than one species, of which only one is our ancestor, or are they all the one species, whose geographic races gave rise to their modern local counterparts? These are the replacement and regional continuity models of human evolution. The evidence, as interpreted in this review, appears to support the replacement hypothesis: our species arose in Africa between 100 000 and 200 000 years ago and, as it spread around the world, replaced those which had formerly lived in Europe and Asia.
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