When did East Asian populations split from others?

[ovidiu]

I'm not sure if this is the right sub-forum but it's a broad question about population history. Were the people who became East Asians or Mongoloids part of the same migration out of Africa as proto-Caucasians? Or were they part of a separate group out of Africa to begin with? I heard that Ethiopians were like a transition between early humans and what we think of as Caucasians. I know most experts seem to think that anatomically modern man (with a basically modern brain) left Africa around 60-50kya, and that there were earlier migrations that ended in extinction.

I also know people reached Europe through the Near East like 20 to 30 thousand years ago? and they mixed with Neanderthals a bit.

And that a very early wave out of Africa across South Asia to Australia like 40kya produced the Aborigines.

Somewhere I read that Asians were the newest race and only a few thousand years old, but the Mal'ta boy in Siberia was from like over 17kya, so that's not totally accurate.

I know most of the reason for the way different races look is gradual adaptation of the population to their environment over thousands of years, with traits more favorable to survival in said environment being passed on. But did archaic hominids like Peking Man or Denisovans contribute to East Asian physiognomy? Did they used to look more or less like Caucasians before reaching Asia and adapting to windy environments? Or just some more general/basic early human type that we don't really know of?

[Peterski]

From West Eurasians probably 45-30,000 years ago.

Mal'ta boy (from 24 kya) wasn't racially East Asian.