homo sapiens evolved in africa ~300k years ago, and the group who ended up populating the rest of the planet left from the eastern plains about 60k years ago. That means our ancestors lived in or around the African plains for roughly 240k years, or 80% of the time our species has existed. I’d say that qualifies as “a large part” of human evolution as the person above said.
Earlier Homo sapiens did migrate out of Africa before 60k years ago but they pretty much all died out or migrated back. So Homo sapiens thriving in environments other than plains/savannah is a fairly recent development in terms of our species’ prehistory.
homo sapiens evolved in africa ~300k years ago, and the group who ended up populating the rest of the planet left from the eastern plains about 60k years ago. That means our ancestors lived in or around the African plains for roughly 240k years, or 80% of the time our species has existed. I’d say that qualifies as “a large part” of human evolution as the person above said.
Earlier Homo sapiens did migrate out of Africa before 60k years ago but they pretty much all died out or migrated back. So Homo sapiens thriving in environments other than plains/savannah is a fairly recent development in terms of our species’ prehistory.