Image Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History 1997: Findings from the first DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton are inconclusive, but seem to point to the accuracy of the single-origin theory, which posits that the modern human race originated from a single species in Africa.
Anthropologists concluded from their examination of the skeleton that the Neanderthal, a separate branch of the Homo genus, was probably displaced, rather than absorbed, from its Eurasian habitat by our true ancestors moving in from the African continent. Neanderthals have been extinct for approximately 30,000 years.
The multiregional hypothesis, which includes the hybrid-origin theory maintaining that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred to form the modern human, was seemingly debunked by the DNA analysis, although the debate continues.
Fossils indicate that the first anatomically modern man, Homo sapien, appeared roughly 200,000 years ago in the east African savannas and began colonizing modern-day Europe and western Asia 40,000 years ago.
Despite the lack of extant fossils and other evidence available in his time, Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to advance the single-origin theory. He wrote of it at length in Descent of Man, published in 1871.
(Source: Associated Press, Wikipedia)