7 ms·

Is it? This is literally the first time Ive seen the word human applied to other hominids. I see many discussions about neanderthals and denisovians and so on.

Is it? This is literally the first time Ive seen the word human applied to other hominids. I see many discussions about neanderthals and denisovians and so on. I have never seen them referred to as human.

jb1991 2y ago
I think it’s not uncommon to refer to Neanderthals as early humans, I’m sure I’ve read that in many places. Natural history museum, for example, refers to them as early humans: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.htm...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- graemep 2y ago
  It is also reasonable to argue that they and we are subspecies of the same species not rather than separate species.
  - acchow 2y ago
    Of course we are not separate species since successful interbreeding did happen (when the populations interacted).
    - jb1991 2y ago
      Donkeys and horses are not the same species, but they interbreed. Their offspring are called mules. Although mules rarely have offspring, so perhaps not a great example.
      - Turskarama 2y ago
        There is supposedly neanderthal DNA in some modern humans, implying that offspring were viable. Breeding resulting in viable offspring is one of the only consistent definitions of what a species even is.
        Amezarak 2y ago
        We could make that the definition, but we'd doing a lot of redefinition: coyotes and wolves would become the same species, as would lions and jaguars. Fertility issues tend to increase with genetic distance but aren't guaranteed; for example, mules are usually but not always sterile.
        acchow 2y ago
        What about the 2nd generation of mule, then 3rd? If the probability of viability keeps dropping generation after generation, eventually it will delete itself?
        Amezarak 2y ago
        It doesn't work like that. Backcrossing it with one of the parent species (assuming fertility in the first place) as you'd expect tends to increase the likelihood of fertile offspring in proportion to the number of generations. And that's exactly what you'd expect in any hybridization event. And anyway, mules are actually pretty special in that horses and donkeys are actually fairly distant relatives (diverged 4 million years ago) and have different numbers of chromosomes. All members of homo (supposed to have emerged all more recently than 3 million years ago) could probably interbreed and the ones that had the opportunity probably did. It's really unfortunate that schools tend to simplify the definition of species in this way, because it's just not really not meaningfully true at all. We could "make" it true by actually defining species this way (at least for animals) but it'd radically transform our taxonomies.
        dbf60fcd 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - Amezarak 2y ago
      That's not the definition of species. Many species can interbreed, sometimes even species that are pretty distantly related.
    - BurningFrog 2y ago
      If you look closely at it, the concept of "species" is impossible to define exactly. That's fine in general. Many words are like that. But it makes it flawed as a scientific concept.
- Thuggery 2y ago
  I have never heard anyone refer to Neanderthal as a human unless they are talking in a "those are cavemen, early humans" way that's wrong. Where is this coming from? Is it a non-English world thing? Generally Neanderthals are pointed out as an exception to cross species fertility since... humans have some Neanderthal DNA.
  - jb1991 2y ago
    Wherever it’s coming from, it’s not based on any particular language. Museums in English-speaking countries use the term.
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    > Generally Neanderthals are pointed out as an exception to cross species fertility since... There's no such rule and Neanderthals are not notable as an exception. Fertility is just a very rough proxy for genetic distance, which is correlated to our arbitrary "species" buckets but by no means a real line or hard rule. Many, many reasonably closely related species can interbreed, like jaguars and lions. Most of homo that had the opportunity could probably interbreed.
lkrubner 2y ago
I'm not sure where you are reading but both layman and scientists commonly use the word "human" to refer to the genus "homo". To look at just one example, Ian Tattersall called one of his books "Extinct Humans" and it is a look at the history of the genus homo: https://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian-Tattersall/dp/0813334829/ https://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian-Tattersall/dp/0813...
AlotOfReading 2y ago
I can't speak to what you have or haven't seen before, but yes it's quite common as informal language among anthropologists with particular kinds of views. Sometimes people will use "modern humans" or "archaic humans" or some other variation to differentiate, but not always and it's usually pretty clear from context regardless. This is just one of many examples of definitions being extremely unstandardized in human evolution. You get used to it after awhile.
seszett 2y ago
> I have never seen them referred to as human. I have never seen anything else. But then in French, they are called Neandertal men and Denisova men. So pretty clearly humans.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  I think it's typical in non-technical English to use "humans" to refer to homo sapiens only, unless you qualify it, like "archaic/early humans". Without additional context I wouldn't assume somebody talking about humans meant to include e.g. Neanderthals.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - skywhopper 2y ago
    Qualifications like, “600k years ago”? That’s pretty clearly talking about the humans of 600k years ago. “Early humans” are still humans.
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      > “Early humans” are still humans. I respectfully disagree, as started in my earlier post. It would be nice if human language worked like that, but it does not always. A "stone frigate" isn't a boat, an "iron lung" isn't a respiratory organ.
      - goatlover 2y ago
        Those things aren't closely related biologically, so not a good analogy. "Human" isn't a precise biological category, it's just based on how the word is used, unlike homo sapiens. And some people, including scientists, use it to mean closely related species of hominids. Or hominids generally.
        Y_Y 2y ago
        I agree? I didn't know close biological relation was a prerequisite for a good analogy, but I'll gladly oblige: vampire squid, velvet ant, slipper lobster, naked ape.
Stratoscope 2y ago
Wait a minute. I am part Neanderthal. Does this mean I am only part human?
- card_zero 2y ago
  You're also part bacterium and part treeshrew, so I couldn't really say for sure.
darby_nine 2y ago
I'll admit this is the first I've encountered the concept that "neanderthals and denisovians and so on" are not human. Maybe not biologically modern humans, but I'd certainly consider them fundamentally human.
- MattPalmer1086 2y ago
  We're all part of the genus "homo", but to me, "human" refers to "homo sapiens". I was sufficiently surprised to hear that humans were around 600k years ago that I came here to comment. The Wikipedia article [1] on humans makes the same point. It does acknowledge that some use the term human to refer to all members of the genus homo, but this is not the common usage. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
  - kman82 2y ago
    [flagged]
- Wissenschafter 2y ago
  Bizarre, this is the first I've encountered the concept of someone thinking Neanderthals and Denisovans were "Human".
  - orhmeh09 2y ago
    Allow me to further blow your mind: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.htm... https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/are-neanderthals-human/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/are-neanderthals-human...
skywhopper 2y ago
Uh, I guess you aren’t reading the same things I am. Neanderthals were definitely “human”.
tshaddox 2y ago
Usage is definitely mixed, but I’m surprised you haven’t encountered this. From Wikipedia: > Although some scientists equate the term "humans" with all members of the genus Homo, in common usage it generally refers to Homo sapiens, the only extant member. All other members of the genus Homo, which are now extinct, are known as archaic humans, and the term "modern human" is used to distinguish Homo sapiens from archaic humans.
BurningFrog 2y ago
Being 2.3% neanderthal, I'm... not sure what to think about it. I think it's a case of the classic issue of trying to make sharp boundaries in a continuum. There just are no fully satisfying answers.
Aardwolf 2y ago
If 500,000 years ago a hominid sits by the fire they lit and is working on sharpening a stone tool, would you say: "someone / a person is sharpening a tool" or "it / a hominid is sharpening a tool"?
- Dgrin 2y ago
  I personally would call them a human, but this seems like a false equivalence unless you believe that personhood is something exclusive to humans. “Someone / a hominid” is perfectly valid and could at the same time be “someone / a person”.

jb1991 2y ago

I think it’s not uncommon to refer to Neanderthals as early humans, I’m sure I’ve read that in many places. Natural history museum, for example, refers to them as early humans: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.htm...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
graemep 2y ago
It is also reasonable to argue that they and we are subspecies of the same species not rather than separate species.
- acchow 2y ago
  Of course we are not separate species since successful interbreeding did happen (when the populations interacted).
  - jb1991 2y ago
    Donkeys and horses are not the same species, but they interbreed. Their offspring are called mules. Although mules rarely have offspring, so perhaps not a great example.
    - Turskarama 2y ago
      There is supposedly neanderthal DNA in some modern humans, implying that offspring were viable. Breeding resulting in viable offspring is one of the only consistent definitions of what a species even is.
      - Amezarak 2y ago
        We could make that the definition, but we'd doing a lot of redefinition: coyotes and wolves would become the same species, as would lions and jaguars. Fertility issues tend to increase with genetic distance but aren't guaranteed; for example, mules are usually but not always sterile.
        acchow 2y ago
        What about the 2nd generation of mule, then 3rd? If the probability of viability keeps dropping generation after generation, eventually it will delete itself?
        Amezarak 2y ago
        It doesn't work like that. Backcrossing it with one of the parent species (assuming fertility in the first place) as you'd expect tends to increase the likelihood of fertile offspring in proportion to the number of generations. And that's exactly what you'd expect in any hybridization event. And anyway, mules are actually pretty special in that horses and donkeys are actually fairly distant relatives (diverged 4 million years ago) and have different numbers of chromosomes. All members of homo (supposed to have emerged all more recently than 3 million years ago) could probably interbreed and the ones that had the opportunity probably did. It's really unfortunate that schools tend to simplify the definition of species in this way, because it's just not really not meaningfully true at all. We could "make" it true by actually defining species this way (at least for animals) but it'd radically transform our taxonomies.
        dbf60fcd 2y ago
        [flagged]
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    That's not the definition of species. Many species can interbreed, sometimes even species that are pretty distantly related.
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    If you look closely at it, the concept of "species" is impossible to define exactly. That's fine in general. Many words are like that. But it makes it flawed as a scientific concept.
Thuggery 2y ago
I have never heard anyone refer to Neanderthal as a human unless they are talking in a "those are cavemen, early humans" way that's wrong. Where is this coming from? Is it a non-English world thing? Generally Neanderthals are pointed out as an exception to cross species fertility since... humans have some Neanderthal DNA.
- jb1991 2y ago
  Wherever it’s coming from, it’s not based on any particular language. Museums in English-speaking countries use the term.
- Amezarak 2y ago
  > Generally Neanderthals are pointed out as an exception to cross species fertility since... There's no such rule and Neanderthals are not notable as an exception. Fertility is just a very rough proxy for genetic distance, which is correlated to our arbitrary "species" buckets but by no means a real line or hard rule. Many, many reasonably closely related species can interbreed, like jaguars and lions. Most of homo that had the opportunity could probably interbreed.

lkrubner 2y ago

I'm not sure where you are reading but both layman and scientists commonly use the word "human" to refer to the genus "homo". To look at just one example, Ian Tattersall called one of his books "Extinct Humans" and it is a look at the history of the genus homo: https://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian-Tattersall/dp/0813334829/ https://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian-Tattersall/dp/0813...

AlotOfReading 2y ago

I can't speak to what you have or haven't seen before, but yes it's quite common as informal language among anthropologists with particular kinds of views. Sometimes people will use "modern humans" or "archaic humans" or some other variation to differentiate, but not always and it's usually pretty clear from context regardless. This is just one of many examples of definitions being extremely unstandardized in human evolution. You get used to it after awhile.

seszett 2y ago

> I have never seen them referred to as human. I have never seen anything else. But then in French, they are called Neandertal men and Denisova men. So pretty clearly humans.

Y_Y 2y ago
I think it's typical in non-technical English to use "humans" to refer to homo sapiens only, unless you qualify it, like "archaic/early humans". Without additional context I wouldn't assume somebody talking about humans meant to include e.g. Neanderthals.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- skywhopper 2y ago
  Qualifications like, “600k years ago”? That’s pretty clearly talking about the humans of 600k years ago. “Early humans” are still humans.
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    > “Early humans” are still humans. I respectfully disagree, as started in my earlier post. It would be nice if human language worked like that, but it does not always. A "stone frigate" isn't a boat, an "iron lung" isn't a respiratory organ.
    - goatlover 2y ago
      Those things aren't closely related biologically, so not a good analogy. "Human" isn't a precise biological category, it's just based on how the word is used, unlike homo sapiens. And some people, including scientists, use it to mean closely related species of hominids. Or hominids generally.
      - Y_Y 2y ago
        I agree? I didn't know close biological relation was a prerequisite for a good analogy, but I'll gladly oblige: vampire squid, velvet ant, slipper lobster, naked ape.

Stratoscope 2y ago

Wait a minute. I am part Neanderthal. Does this mean I am only part human?

card_zero 2y ago
You're also part bacterium and part treeshrew, so I couldn't really say for sure.

darby_nine 2y ago

I'll admit this is the first I've encountered the concept that "neanderthals and denisovians and so on" are not human. Maybe not biologically modern humans, but I'd certainly consider them fundamentally human.

MattPalmer1086 2y ago
We're all part of the genus "homo", but to me, "human" refers to "homo sapiens". I was sufficiently surprised to hear that humans were around 600k years ago that I came here to comment. The Wikipedia article [1] on humans makes the same point. It does acknowledge that some use the term human to refer to all members of the genus homo, but this is not the common usage. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
- kman82 2y ago
  [flagged]
Wissenschafter 2y ago
Bizarre, this is the first I've encountered the concept of someone thinking Neanderthals and Denisovans were "Human".
- orhmeh09 2y ago
  Allow me to further blow your mind: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.htm... https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/are-neanderthals-human/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/are-neanderthals-human...

skywhopper 2y ago

Uh, I guess you aren’t reading the same things I am. Neanderthals were definitely “human”.

tshaddox 2y ago

Usage is definitely mixed, but I’m surprised you haven’t encountered this. From Wikipedia: > Although some scientists equate the term "humans" with all members of the genus Homo, in common usage it generally refers to Homo sapiens, the only extant member. All other members of the genus Homo, which are now extinct, are known as archaic humans, and the term "modern human" is used to distinguish Homo sapiens from archaic humans.

BurningFrog 2y ago

Being 2.3% neanderthal, I'm... not sure what to think about it. I think it's a case of the classic issue of trying to make sharp boundaries in a continuum. There just are no fully satisfying answers.

Aardwolf 2y ago

If 500,000 years ago a hominid sits by the fire they lit and is working on sharpening a stone tool, would you say: "someone / a person is sharpening a tool" or "it / a hominid is sharpening a tool"?

Dgrin 2y ago
I personally would call them a human, but this seems like a false equivalence unless you believe that personhood is something exclusive to humans. “Someone / a hominid” is perfectly valid and could at the same time be “someone / a person”.