The oldest Homo heidelbergensis is found in Heidelberg (Germany) and has an estimated Age of 530,000 years. Therefore it could be suggested that the Homo antecessor (the last ancestor of both Sapiens and Neanderthals) survived in Europe until more or less that age.
However the last common ancestor between both Sapiens and Neanderthals should have lived in Africa before Europe was colonised by the Homo antecessors. There are some hominid remains in Europe, as shown in the article, with an estimated age of more than a million years, but those belong to some intrepid "explorers" rather than to a permanent settlement, most anthropologists believe the effective colonisation of Europe took place about 800,000 years ago.
I don't believe in the Multi-regional theory at all, I'm an
Outofafricaist
, but I believe that the last common ancestor between Neanderthals and Sapiens lived 1,000,000-800,000 years ago.
This is the evolutionary scheme proposed by the Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) Research team in 1997, probably the most accurate one until now:
