Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"In Africa we formed our first communities, spoke our first words, and created our first art. From Africa our ancestor hominins spread outward into Eurasia more than 2 million years ago. From Africa our species emigrated, beginning perhaps 95,000 years ago, northward into present-day Europe and eastward via southern Asia into Australia and, much later, farther afield into the Americas. . . . Africa is the cradle of humankind. . . . It is, therefore, ironic that we know comparatively little about Subsaharan Africa from 5000 to 500 years ago—that is, before the onset of European colonialism." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 280-2] "Around 60,000 years ago, a man--genetically identical to us--lived in Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him." [The Journey of Man, jacket cover] "The recent African origin paradigm suggests that the anatomically modern humans outside of Africa descend from a population of Homo sapiens migrating from East Africa roughly 70-50,000 years ago and spreading along the southern coast of Asia and to Oceania by about 50,000 years ago. Modern humans spread across Europe about 40,000 years ago." [Wikipedia]