New evidence indicates that modern humans were living all across Africa 300,000 to 350,000 years ago. Previously, it has been argued that modern humans did not exist until 200,000 years ago and evolved in east Africa, but new archaeological evidence from Morocco and South Africa seem to show modern humans - homo sapiens, which is what we are - lived all across the African continent more than 300,000 years ago.
Human ancestors, known as hominids, were walking upright in eastern Africa more than 3 million years ago, and it is believed our species evolved from these first bipedal apes, which had brains closer in size to chimpanzees than to modern humans. Many, many, many, many mutations later, modern humans appeared in the fossil record. And yes, almost all modern humans carry Neanderthal genes, so we probably didn’t wipe them out, as some theories suggest, but assimilated them. (Read more on this here: At least 20% of Neanderthal DNA Is in Humans
