Homo sapiens evolved within a set of interlinked groups living across Africa
cell.com
cell.com
They posit we did not sprout from a single region of Africa, but rather ancestors of our species interbred across regions at varying rates and all that eventually resulted in homo sapiens.
All the interbreeding happened all thought 500k to 40k ya --which is pretty close to when people began spreading to other continents already.
Pretty wild.