It's just a weird argument to make because nobody is claiming that we are descended from chimpanzees, monkeys, etc. As far as I know from history, that same strawman argument was used extensively during the evolution debates of the 1930s in America.
It's a place to tread carefully in the context of discussing a multiregional human origin theory.
I can't read minds but they may have intended to point out that while humans did not evolve from any of our modern cousins (modern apes, modern monkeys) we all evolved from some common ancestor (generally classed | accepted as an 'ape' albeit not a modern one) and it's conceivable that common ancestor may have had its own diaspora from which various human groups evolved in differing regions of the world.
Not my argument, mind you.
This all being distinct from Snopes trial era memes, etc.
That widely dispersed ape we evolved from is already a well-established species called Homo erectus.
The conflict this thread is discussing is between the (strong) multiregional human origin model (MRO/MRE) that used to argue that these aboriginal are where modern dispersed populations come from. This view is now considered completely dead on the basis of genetic evidence alone, with dozens of other lines of evidence refuting it. Weaker versions still exist though.
The oppositional view was that humans evolved solely in a small part of Africa and spread from there, with no little/no admixture from other archaic humans, called the recent single origin model (RSO). This view is not widely held today either.
Modern anthropologists and evolutionary biologists usually believe that humans evolved out of a complex mix of archaic humans broadly distributed across Africa into anatomically modern humans (AMHs). Eventually AMHs left Africa and admixed with other archaic humans in a fairly minor way, forming modern human populations. Differences between academics usually come down to what they think of that within-Africa population structure, or thetiming/significance of archaic admixture. Chinese academics tend to follow in the footsteps of Xinzhi Wu, a prominent Chinese academic that was a strong MRO advocate before his death. That includes the authors of this paper.
I largely agree save I'd describe Homo Erectus as mildly dispersed (from my perspective and to the best of my current knowledge, admittedly a few years out of date), never having gone deep into Europe, Mongolian steppes, the Americas, Northern China, the Sahul (Meganesia|Oceania), etc.
