text: Among extant populations, the Khoi-San (or "Capoid") hunters-gatherers of Southern Africa may represent the human population with the earliest possible divergence within the group Homo sapiens sapiens. Their separation time has been estimated in a 2017 study to be between 350 and 260,000 years ago, compatible with the estimated age of early H. sapiens. The study states that the deep split-time estimation of 350 to 260 thousand years ago is consistent with the archaeological estimate for the onset of the Middle Stone Age across sub-Saharan Africa and coincides with archaic H. sapiens in southern Africa represented by, for example, the Florisbad skull dating to 259 (± 35) thousand years ago.
  H. s. idaltu, found at Middle Awash in Ethiopia, lived about 160,000 years ago, and H. sapiens lived at Omo Kibish in Ethiopia about 233,000-195,000 years ago. Two fossils from Guomde, Kenya, dated to at least (and likely more than) 180,000 years ago and (more precisely) to 300–270,000 years ago, have been tentatively assigned to H. sapiens and similarities have been noted between them and the Omo Kibbish remains. Fossil evidence for modern human presence in West Asia is ascertained for 177,000 years ago, and disputed fossil evidence suggests expansion as far as East Asia by 120,000 years ago.