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)