The ‘Out of Africa’ Theory Just Got Challenged by New Evidence
New Youtube video discusses the “out-of-Africa theory” of human evolution, suggesting it may be incorrect based on recent findings and challenging common “evolution myths”.
For more than a century, paleoanthropologists have wrestled with one of the most perplexing chapters in human evolution: the Middle Pleistocene, a long and murky interval between the emergence of early Homo erectus and the rise of recognizably modern humans.
Spanning roughly 800,000 to 300,000 years ago, this period witnessed profound evolutionary changes, yet it has remained stubbornly resistant to clear interpretation. Fragmentary fossils, uneven geographic sampling, and deeply entangled population histories have blurred evolutionary boundaries that researchers once hoped to draw cleanly.
This confusion has earned an almost affectionate nickname among specialists: “the muddle in the middle.”
watch the video below for the full story:
Now, that muddle may finally be taking shape—thanks in large part to fossils from East Asia and a striking reassessment by one of the field’s most influential figures. In a recent commentary, paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer, long regarded as a founding architect of the “Out of Africa” model, argues that some of the deepest roots of our species may lie not only in Africa, but also in Eurasia. Coming from Stringer, this is nothing short of seismic.
At the center of this reassessment are the Yunxian fossils from central China. Discovered along the left bank of the Han River, a tributary of the Yangtze in Hubei Province, the site has yielded three hominin crania: Yunxian 1 (found in 1989), Yunxian 2 (1990), and Yunxian 3 (unearthed in 2022 and still under preparation). Paleomagnetic and biostratigraphic dating places the deposits between roughly 940,000 and 1.1 million years old, making them among the oldest and most complete hominin skulls ever recovered from this era.
For decades, the Yunxian specimens defied confident classification. They were variously assigned to Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, or loosely labeled as “archaic Homo sapiens.” The problem was not just taxonomy, but distortion: Yunxian 1 is badly crushed, and Yunxian 2 suffered significant deformation. Only recently have advances in high-resolution CT scanning and structured-light imaging allowed researchers to digitally reconstruct the fossils’ original three-dimensional form.
When Stringer and his colleagues digitally restored Yunxian 2—supplementing missing elements with data from Yunxian 1—the result was unexpected. The cranium is long and low, consistent with early Homo, but its brain size, estimated at around 1,143 cubic centimeters, is remarkably large for its age. Even more intriguing is its anatomy: the face and occipital region display a mosaic of traits that do not fit neatly into any single known species.
Some features align with East Asian fossils such as the Harbin cranium, often assigned to Homo longi and linked by some researchers to Denisovans. Others resemble traits seen in later Homo sapiens. This blend of primitive and derived characteristics exemplifies the very “muddle” that has frustrated researchers for generations.
Using geometric morphometrics and parsimony-based phylogenetic analyses, the research team consistently placed Yunxian 2 as an early member of the Homo longi clade—a grouping that likely includes Denisovans and several other Chinese fossils of similar age. Even more striking is Yunxian’s close relationship to Homo antecessor, known from Atapuerca in Spain. Together, Yunxian and H. antecessor appear as a sister group to the sapiens lineage.
If this interpretation is correct, the implications are profound. It suggests that the Denisovan lineage, Homo antecessor, and the ancestors of modern humans share a common stem population that may have existed in Eurasia more than a million years ago. This directly challenges the traditional view that the deepest roots of Homo sapiens lie exclusively in Africa.
Stringer is careful to emphasize that this does not negate an African origin for modern humans themselves. Rather, it opens the possibility that key earlier diversification events occurred outside Africa, with later evolutionary phases continuing on the African continent. In this framework, East Asia is no longer a peripheral backwater of human evolution, but a central arena where major lineages diverged.
This revised picture also helps bring order to the Middle Pleistocene chaos. Stringer and colleagues propose that most large-brained hominins from the last 800,000 years can be grouped into five major lineages: Asian Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, and the Denisovan lineage. Rather than a single linear progression, these groups represent branches that diverged early, coexisted for hundreds of thousands of years, and frequently interbred.
Notably, classic Homo heidelbergensis—represented by fossils such as Kabwe (Zambia) and Petralona (Greece)—now appears to be a side branch that split as early as 1.5 million years ago, rather than a direct ancestor of Neanderthals or modern humans. Our evolutionary history, in other words, resembles a bush with many early-growing stems, not a ladder.
Genetic evidence reinforces this tangled narrative. Ancient DNA has already shown extensive interbreeding among Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans. Stringer and colleagues argue that similar hybridization likely occurred even earlier, blurring morphological boundaries and producing fossils with puzzling combinations of traits—such as several enigmatic Chinese crania that have resisted classification for decades.
Recent genomic studies further complicate the picture. Evidence from sites like Ranis in Germany and Zlatý kůň in Czechia suggests that early Homo sapiens entered Europe around 45,000 years ago in small, ultimately unsuccessful waves. These pioneers left no lasting genetic legacy and were later replaced by populations that had already interbred with Neanderthals. Such findings imply that many early dispersals of modern humans failed, and that only later expansions gave rise to present-day populations.
Taken together, the Yunxian fossils anchor a pivotal moment around one million years ago, when multiple human lineages were diverging, migrating, and interbreeding across Africa and Eurasia. They offer perhaps the clearest window yet into the evolutionary processes that produced Neanderthals, Denisovans, and ultimately ourselves.
The “muddle in the middle” is not fully resolved, but its outlines are becoming clearer. The emerging story is not one of simple descent from a single place, but of divergence, coexistence, and recombination—a braided river of ancient populations flowing across continents long before Homo sapiens began its final global expansion. As new fossils are prepared and new genomes analyzed, especially from East Asia, that braided river may finally be mapped in detail.
Yunxian has opened the door. What lies beyond it may permanently change how we understand what it means to be human.
About the author: John O’Sullivan is CEO and co-founder (with Dr Tim Ball among others) of Principia Scientific International (PSI). He is a seasoned science writer, retired teacher and legal analyst who assisted skeptic climatologist Dr Ball in defeating UN climate expert, Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann in the multi-million-dollar ‘science trial of the century‘. From 2010 O’Sullivan led the original ‘Slayers’ group of scientists who compiled the book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ debunking alarmist lies about carbon dioxide plus their follow-up climate book. His most recent publication, ‘Slaying the Virus and Vaccine Dragon’ broadens PSI’s critiques of mainstream medical group think and junk science.