When Homo Sapiens Entered Africa 500 000 Years Ago What Did They Find

When Homo Sapiens Entered Africa 500,000 Years Ago, What Did They Find?
They found a continent that was not empty, not primitive in the simple sense, and not waiting for them. They found other humans. Heavy humans. Deep-faced humans. Big-jawed, thick-browed, broad-bodied populations adapted to local ecologies over immense spans of time. They found river valleys, lakeshores, wooded corridors, volcanic highlands, and hunting grounds already occupied by lineages that had survived there for hundreds of thousands of years. They found competitors, possible mates, enemies, and things that in another telling might have been called monsters, except they were human enough to breed with.