4 ms·
Can we all agree that 'human' should be defined as all members of the genus Homo?
by sydbarrett74 2y ago
Can we all agree that 'human' should be defined as all members of the genus Homo?
- Pengtuzi 2y agoNo
- alberto_ol 2y agoArchaic human? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_humans
- Chris2048 2y ago[flagged]
- fifticon 2y ago[flagged]
- eru 2y agoI would be fairly happy with that definition, but I wouldn't rely on it out-of-context. (I would definitely call Neanderthals "human" in almost any context.)
- ljf 2y agoAccording to 23andme I am 2 to 4% neanderthal, and I think of myself as human...
- eru 2y agoWhile funny, I don't think this has much bearing on the topic at hand: we share a lot of DNA with chimps as well (or rather, the last common ancestor between chimps and humans). But that doesn't mean we should call chimps human. So the shared genes alone can't be used as a reason to call Neanderthals human.
- ljf 2y agoTrue, but while all humans have chimp dna, many humans have 0 percent neanderthal dna - are they more human than me?
- eru 2y agoNo human had a chimp ancestor. But humans share a fairly recent common ancestor with chimps. Some human had Neanderthal ancestors, some did not, as you rightly suggest. However, all humans and Neanderthals share a common ancestor that's much more recent than our last common ancestor with chimps. Ie we only have 'chimp DNA' in the sense that we share a lot of DNA with them, and that we haven't changed too much since our last common ancestor. Exactly the same is true of us and Neanderthals.
- bloak 2y agoA single-word common name usually refers to a genus: "oak" is anything in Quercus, "wagtail" is anything in Motacilla and so on. That's not conclusive because there are plenty of exceptions, and "human" could easily qualify as a special case, but I don't see why "human" shouldn't be any member of Homo.