<P> Earliest human migrations and expansions of archaic and modern humans across continents began 2 million years ago with the migration out of Africa of Homo erectus . This was followed by the migrations of other pre-modern humans including H. heidelbergensis, the likely ancestor of both anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals . Finally, the recent African origin paradigm suggests that Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa around 100,000 years ago, spread across Asia approximately 60,000 years ago, and subsequently populated other continents and islands . </P> <P> Knowledge of early human migrations, a major topic of archeology, has been achieved by the study of human fossils, occasionally by stone - age artifacts and more recently has been assisted by archaeogenetics . Cultural and ethnic migrations are estimated by combining archaeogenetics and comparative linguistics . </P>

The first hominin species to move out of africa into other parts of the world was