In the past, it was believed that the modern human race descended from a human ancestor, between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. However, the exclusion of some living populations from the anatomically modern morphological classification was a problem.

Because of this, a 'cladistic' definition of Homo sapiens has been proposed, according to which the term would, by definition, refer to the modern human lineage that resulted from the division from the Neanderthal lineage. According to a cladistic definition, Homo sapiens have been around for more than 500,000 years.

An alternative definition of Homo sapiens includes the lineage of modern humans, since we diverged from the Neanderthals between 500,000 and 800,000 years ago. However, around 744,000 years ago, when combined with numerous early admixture events, and Denisovans diverging from Neanderthals 300 generations after their split from Homo sapiens, is the estimated time of the divergence between archaic Homo sapiens and ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans, which was caused by a genetic bottleneck of the latter.