The Stone Age of Southwestern Tanzania

By Pamela R.Willoughby, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: "East Africa has always been important for the study of human evolution. It has the longest record of fossil hominids, extending back almost 5 million years. It also has a number of sites which show that the archaeological or cultural record goes back to 2.5 million years ago.
But recently, it became clear that East Africa, and Africa in general, is as important for the later stages of human evolution as it is for the earlier ones. Genetic and fossil evidence show that our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa, as early as 200,000 years ago. Then around 50-40,000 years ago, descendants of this founder population spread out, replacing (or possibly interbreeding with) hominid groups in Eurasia such as the neandertals, and ultimately peopled the globe"...LINK