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Maybe, maybe not. Human history has been drastically shaped by geography, causing humans to leave wherever they first evolved and travel across the world, becoming by far the dominant species.

Perhaps with different geography, humans would have gone extinct long before figuring out how to make fire or the wheel.

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I was wondering how difficult it might be to modify Earth's geography to ensure humans went extinct, while still having them evolve in the first place.

I think the answer is barely, if at all. Using the power of known population bottlenecks (e g. [0]) and chaotic dynamics we can say that any trivial change might lead to a brief existence for humanity. Specifically I'm thinking of something like Lotka-Volterra leading to Gambler's Ruin.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h...

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