Disregarding the extremely inhospitable spots even the most stubborn of us have enough common sense to avoid, humans have managed to cover an extraordinary amount of territory on this earth. Go back 200,000 years, however, and Homo sapiens was only a newly budding species developing in Africa, while perceived ancestors such as Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis had already travelled beyond Africa to explore parts of Eurasia, and sister species like the Neanderthal and Denisovan would traipse around there way before we did, too. Meanwhile, the wake-up calls of Homo floresiensis, found in Indonesia, and Homo naledi from South Africa (which do not seem to fit with previous, more linear models) serve as excellent reminders that the story of human migrations across the prehistoric landscape is far from a simple one.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original article at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1070/early-human-migration/.
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