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> 'By “modern humans,” I mean Homo sapiens' Though it's not a distinction many people care about, for me this is always the fundamental context: Homo Sapiens,
by stakkur 5y ago
> 'By “modern humans,” I mean Homo sapiens'
Though it's not a distinction many people care about, for me this is always the fundamental context: Homo Sapiens, not 'humans'. There have been many species of humans; only one of them made it to modern times. So--the post isn't on 'human origins', it's on 'Homo Sapien origins'.
- quietbritishjim 5y agoThe article clarifies that "human" includes the whole homo genus (well, not explicitly, but it at least mentions other species in homo as being human) within the same paragraph you quoted from.
- stakkur 5y agoHe's talking about the origin of 'modern humans', which are specifically the homo sapien species, not about the origin of all humans. He even says so: >"Today almost everything we had figured out then is wrong. We didn’t understand the origin of modern humans, and we’re still in the process of unpacking all the complexity as more and more findings come to light." And thanks for the downvote.
- didibus 5y agoI'm not sure I understand what you're saying? The article explains that modern humans actually don't descend exclusively from homo sapiens, but also have lineage from Neanderthals and Denisovans, and that's just of the ones we know. So the article seems to talk about the origin of modern humans as in the people alive today that we'd all consider to be human. That's why he specifies that now we understand that what we thought in the 80s, that modern humans = homo sapiens, we now know is wrong, as we now know that modern humans involve a more complex lineage. But what we thought of the homo sapiens lineage does seem to be correct though. At least that's what I understood of the article. Now I don't know how precise and correct and up to date the article is.