It is classically assumed that the history of the human populations in Eurasia was the result of a few high impact dispersals out of Africa. However, recent discoveries suggest that evolution in Eurasia during a large part of the last million years was largely independent from that in Africa, and that not all the genus Homo species were necessarily born in the latter. Similarities found between the hominins from Europe and Asia add weight to the hypothesis of an Asian origin for the first humans in Europe. In particular, Homo antecessor from Gran Dolina-TD6 site (Atapuerca, Spain), was described as the last common ancestor (LCA) of modern humans and Neanderthals based on the early expression of a unique combination of traits. However, this combination may also be present in some Chinese fossils (Yunxian and Nanjing), shedding light on a possible Eurasian origin for the LCA. In addition, hot-of-the-press data on paleogenetics pushes back the split of Neanderthals and modern humans to 550,000-765,000 years ago, obliging to a reassessment of H. antecessor under a exciting new light. Furthermore, “archaic hominins” such as Dali or Maba could be the “Asian version” of the European pre-Neandertals. In this case, the comparison to the Atapuerca-Sima de los Huesos (SH) sample, representing more than 80% of the Middle Pleistocene record worldwide for Homo, would be crucial to explore the East-West connections at this time. Finally, our discovery of the earliest Homo sapiens ever found in China, challenges the time of the recent Out of Africa hypotheses and unveils a totally unknown Asian episode in our species’ past.

Another key issue is that the variability of the Asian hominins may have been oversimplified under the blanket term of H. erectus. The discovery of the mysterious Denisovans (Siberia), defined on the basis of their genome sequence but for which the anatomical evidence is limited to a few teeth, brings a warning note about the necessity of revisiting the fossil record, where some of those Denisovans may be being overlooked. Their genetic proximity between Denisovans and SH would be another evidence in favour of the interactions “within” and not necessarily “between” continents.

Thus, although the very first steps of the humankind may have taken place in Africa 4 million years ago, it seems that the origin and evolution of the genus Homo species need not be an exclusively Out of Africa story. However, this paradigm shift requires a sound exploration with the right samples and the right methods. This projects aims to study the variability of the hominin fossil record during the Pleistocene. By combining the fossil evidence with the biogeographic context we expect to shed light on the taxonomy and phylogeny of the genus Homo as well as the evolutionary context of these groups.