The fossil record of early hominins in Africa is very well established with patterns of later migrations into Asia and Europe. The hypothesis is sometimes referred to as "Out of Africa".
However a new paper from researchers at the University of Toronto describes two fossil specimens of an even earlier ancestor Graecopithecus freybergi who lived 7.2 million years ago, putting it close to our common ancestor with chimpanzees. Crucially these fossils were not discovered in Africa but in Greece and Bulgaria.
The team are proposing that environmental changes that led to the formation of the Sahara pushed the ancestors of Graecopithecus freybergi further North towards the Eastern Mediterranean where the chimp-human split occurred.
This hypothesis is likely to be controversial for all sorts of reasons!