Interviewee: Svante Paabo. Origins of modern humans.

What we think we know about the origins of modern humans today is that we go back to a rather small population that lived sometime around 100 or 200 thousand years ago in Africa, where some changes happened that we don't quite know what they are, actually, that made this group expand and replace other forms of humans elsewhere. Perhaps they interbred a little bit with those groups but not to a great extent, and when we trace our ancestry, common ancestry with a Neandertal back, that goes back much further, about two or three times further back, so around half a million years ago, we seem to have shared an ancestor with the Neandertals.

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