Humans From Where?

Dr. Craig shares one geographic possibility for the location of human origins.

INTERVIEWER: What you've just said there – I wasn't expecting you to say this – you said that it looks as if humanity had their origin in the Middle East, not in Africa. Because the prevailing popular perception (it may not be based on the latest research, of course) is that we all came out of Africa. But you're saying the Middle East and then went into Africa. I was very surprised to hear that.

DR. CRAIG: That is an option. The famous “out of Africa” migration is talking about the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa into Europe and the Middle East. But that's far too late. I've already pushed the origin of humanity back to the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, and that could have been in the Middle East or it could have been elsewhere. Then these Homo heidelbergensis migrated to these other areas where, geographically isolated from one another, they evolved into these different human species.