It has always seemed to me far more likely that humanity first appeared in the eastern Mediterranean basin. It is highly improbable that mankind developed from ape ancestors. The dividing line is that hominids, apes and chimps have, intrinsically, a differently inclined 'direction' of development, so different in bone structure and lacking in other features that no common ancestor is likely.
Life is, I maintain, initiated by the alteration of the carbon atom in supernova and engenders the first step on the path to life, replication. Some of these atoms, in their billions, got lucky and landed in our atmosphere - maybe still do! Here they complete the process.
I believe that wherever initial lifeforms appear, the effect of the precise physical makeup of the conditions prevailing, sets the numerous and newly generated basic evolutionary particles moving in a manner that initiates a wide variety of slightly differing outcomes. Thus, despite having near identical initial forms, many closely related, but different species, evolve in parallel. This seems far more probable than the tortuous, luck dominated and often improbable machinations presently attributed to evolution. Their DNA will have evolved in very close comparability, a comparability which may persuade some to disagree.
To suggest that man descended from some already sophisticated, differently structured common ancestor predicates evolutionary events, powers of complexity just not needed (perhaps not possible) if hominids, apes and monkeys grew on separate branches of very similar, but not identical trees.
The progress of evolution is currently predicated on descent from a single basic life form. Some overly eulogise and profess almost hysterical wonder at all life being spawned by a single surviving basic lifeform.
I don't!
Such a miraculous event is ridiculously unlikely. It is hard enough for millions to survive and that foolish assumption suggests that only one out of millions of near identical basic lifeforms had survived!
No! Many survived to co-exist in survivable conditions no matter what the casualty rate!