Not a bad book.
Yes. Before there was homo sapiens, there were archaic forms of humans—homo erectus, homo antecessor, homo heidelbergis and homo neanderthalis and homo denisovian. Some now say both homo sapiens and homo neanderthalis derived from homo heidelbergis, as did the Denisovians (only discovered in 2010).
So, homo heidelbergis eolved into neanderthals/denisovians in Eurasia, and evolved into homo sapiens in Africa. The homo sapiens in Africa went on to breed and absorb whatever non-homo sapiens were still there, and once out of Africa, bred and absorbed the remaining Neanderthals and Denisovians in Eurasia.
Now it appears there were other non-homo sapiens in Eurasia that haven’t been yet discovered, but show up in or DNA.
To simplify; At one time, there were several species of homo—all closely related. Think of horses, zebras and burros. Homo sapiens is not just the result of one species, but a mixture of some of these others, which appears in our DNA. The rest of those non-mixed homo lineages eventually died off, leaving only homo sapiens, but it turns out, we’re modified by some of these others.