Can someone explain Homo sapien and Neanderthal evolution..?

[dsperbs]

I am very confused about the evolution of modern humans and their relation to neanderthals. I found that humans and neanderthals are thought to have diverged about 500,000 years ago, while a universal female ancestor lived around 200,000 years ago while the male ancestor lived 60,000 years ago. How do you explain this? Additionally, there is evidence that humans have 1-4% of neanderthal dna, however I have found elsewhere that the genomes are 99% identical. Lastly, if you could explain migrations out of africa that would also help...I found that homo erectus left africa over a million years ago. If you could explain out of africa vs multi-regional in this context that would be great. Thank you very much for the assistance.
@geebee: Thanks for that. You clarified a lot for me. My understanding is that modern humans evolved from neanderthals. Were Mitochondrial Eve and the Adam we are all related to actually homo sapiens? Additionally, how do we explain the fact that neanderthals left africa thousands of years before humans diverged. On another note, is it correct to say that the multi-regional theory could be countered with the fact that if humans evolved separately, we would likely be many different species rather than the same species (ie in the galapagos, if the same bird inhabited multiple islands, the evolutionary offspring from these birds will not be the same, so the hominids that evolved from homo erectus in different continents shouldn't be identical)

 

[geebee1]

Here's some Time-lines to sort out the different time schedules.

Let's start with Us first, O.K..?

5 million years ago, we parted from 'the primates.' you know apes, chimps, etc. We evolved our separate ways. We became Homo Sapiens and, once we had advanced considerably, on the African Continent, we left Africa 70,000 ago.

Hang on. No rush here. There's the accepted time-scale that we go back 200,000 years before we can rightly call ourselves Cro-Magnum Homo Sapiens. In Africa, all this time.

Something that has put the cat amongst the pigeons is those pesky Israeli Archeologists (again.!) who say they have discovered teeth belonging to Cro-Magnum and they date them back to 400,000 years..! That puts a possible exit date for 'Us' 200,000 years further back in time.

And it all fits...

The Neanderthals parted from The Primates a lot earlier that us, by half or even a full million before we did. They left Africa 500,000 years ago, maybe 100,000 years before us or, if the 'early date' is still accepted as correct, 300,000 years before we set foot on soil other than Africa.

We meet up with them much later. By this time we are just coming into our prime and they are declining. Their interaction and clashes with us brought about their extinction. Yet they were so close. So much so that when Cro-Magnum and Neanderthal weren't fighting, we were cohabitating and we know that now, cos we have between 1.5 - 4% of our DNA is Neanderthal, so we lived together at one time or another.

To add to The Israeli Confusion (which states that 'Not Africa, rather, The Middle East is The start) to add to all that, they're also saying, 'Maybe it also started in China, simultaneously.....'

Stand by. We are all waiting for some results.