And another from Funk and Wagnell's 2006 Encyclopaedia:
"Although placed in the same genus and species, these early H. sapiens are not identical in appearance with modern humans. New fossil evidence suggests that modern man, H. sapiens sapiens, first appeared more than 90,000 years ago. There is some disagreement among scientists on whether the hominine fossil record shows a continuous evolutionary development from the first appearance of H. sapiens to modern humans. This disagreement has especially focused on the place of Neanderthals (or Neandertals), often classified as H. sapiens neanderthalis, in the chain of human evolution. The Neanderthals (named for the Neander Valley in Germany, where one of the earliest skulls was first found in 1856) were numerous in much of Europe and the Middle East from about 130,000 years ago until about 35,000 years ago, when they disappeared from the fossil record. Recently discovered evidence suggests that Neanderthals may have evolved in Spain some 300,000 years ago. Fossils of additional varieties of early H. sapiens have been found in other parts of the world.
The dispute over the Neanderthals also involves the question of the evolutionary origins of modern human populations, or races. Although a precise definition of the term race is not possible (because modern humans show continuous variation from one geographic area to another), widely separate human populations are marked by a number of physical differences. The majority of these differences represent adaptations to local environmental conditions, a process that some scientists believe began with the spread of H. erectus to all parts of the Old World sometime after a million years ago. In their view, human development since H. erectus has been one continuous, in-position evolution; that is, local populations have remained, changing in appearance over time. The Neanderthals and other early H. sapiens are seen as descending from H. erectus and ancestral to modern humans.
Other scientists view racial differentiation as a relatively recent phenomenon. In their opinion, the features of the Neanderthals—a low, sloping forehead, large brow ridge, and a large face without a chin—are too primitive for them to be considered the ancestors of modern humans. They place the Neanderthals on a side branch of the human evolutionary tree that became extinct. According to this theory, modern humans first evolved perhaps 90,000 to 200,000 years ago in southern Africa or the Middle East. These people then spread to all parts of the world, supplanting the local, earlier H. sapiens populations. In addition to fragmentary fossil finds from southern Africa, support for this theory comes from comparisons of mitochondrial DNA—a form inherited only from the mother—taken from women representing a worldwide distribution of ancestors. These studies suggest that humans derived from a single generation in sub-Saharan Africa or southeastern Asia."