Talk:Homo

"Spacial and Time distribution"

This image

http:/upwiki/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Humanevolutionchart.jpg

should be specifically marked as conforming to the "Out of Africa" theory; while those who are familiar with both theories will recognise this right away, those who are unfamiliar that there are competing theories will take this image to be a factual representation of human evolution, which it is not (well, at least not until the multiple origin theory is proven beyond all doubt to be wrong, which hasn't happened yet). I'm unable to alter it myself, but I thought someone who can alter the article should add a little caveat to the caption. 99.126.241.110 (talk) 20:41, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Kenyanthropus as our likely ancestor

Just out of curiosity, why was my edit undone? The article states that the Kenyanthropus platyops species is the likely ancestor of Homo, yet this is a hotly debated topic. My edit specifically stated that Humans descended from either Kenyanthropus, Australopithecus or Paranthropus. As there is still no general concensus, we should err on the side of caution by limiting our choices to these three taxa, rather than saying what we personally believe is true. To do otherwise somewhat clashes with the NPOV of the site, in my opinion. Granted, I've been out of the loop for the last 10 months, so things may have changed, but I believe I would have heard about it. Unless you can cite your source that this specimen is, in fact, generally accepted as our common ancestor, I believe it should be returned to the edit that I made.Drur93 05:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Given that the previous version stated there was no consensus on this, if you are going to make a change that states something more conclusive, you'll need to provide a citation for it. - UtherSRG (talk) 10:48, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

That's the point, the previous version stated that Kenyanthropus was the likely ancestor. "Likely" suggests that a majority of experts in the field agree - that's not the case, as there is a lot of debate still. As there is no general consensus, stating this as factual is inaccurate at this time. The change I made explained that we still do not know whether we're the descendants of Kenyanthropus or Australopithecus. Ergo, we should stray on the side of caution by not labeling Kenyanthropus as our "likely Ancestor". - Drur93 01:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Typography: dagger and extinction

I have seen the dagger character (†) used to indicate an individual's death in German language source material, but have never seen it used in English or French sources. I do not believe it is standard encyclopedic usage. It is currently in use on the article page to indicate extinct species of homo. The article page for dagger claims "Since it also represents the Christian cross, in certain predominantly Christian regions, the mark is used in a text after the name of a deceased person or the date of death, as in Christian grave headstones." - and I have reason to doubt the neanderthals et al., were Christian. If noone justifies its use here, I shall remove it within the week. Cheers, samwaltz 03:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The dagger character is often used to denote extinct taxa (as mentioned in the article). Mgiganteus1 06:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Even if they're Jewish? Ah, well, that's what I get for searching the article for death/dead, rather than extinct. samwaltz 12:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Linnaeus's Wise man

Is there a 'Homo sapiens Linnaeus' Tho whole of WikiSpecies is confused. Does anyone on Wikipedia Know?

No, Linnaeus is the person who named the human species "Homo sapiens." Someone the Person 23:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Red links factual?

Homo in Greek means Same. Mom you are wrong and I was right. There are a lot of red links in the list of species and subspecies. There are a couple of species, and many more subspecies, which do not have an article on Wikipedia, are not in the table, and are not covered by the external links. For example, 14 subspecies of Homo erectus are listed. Four of them have an article on Wikipedia, and the remaining ten not only don't have an article, but also are not mentioned in the article Homo erectus. Also, there are 5 subspecies of Homo sapiens listed, and only 2 are mentioned anywhere else in Wikipedia. Note the information given for a couple of the extra subspecies: "Homo sapiens archaic (most ancient wise man) discovered 2003. Homo sapiens fossilis (fossil wise man) discovered 1869." Firstly, Homo sapiens idaltu is "the oldest representative of the H. sapiens species found so far," according to the article on it. Secondly, I don't think scientists would make fossilized humans a separate subspecies, because any living thing can be fossilized. What is going on here? Someone the Person 23:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not clear what's going on. I'm very confused by the dates for the various species as well. Looks like h. ergaster went extinct long before most textbooks say that it did.Levalley (talk) 01:48, 26 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

Boskop Man?

Can anyone comment on and/or help with Boskop Man? Anthro Project assumes he is no longer used and was rolled into another species... Please help if you have a clue. Smilo Don 16:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Homo --- genus should be a category too

This topic should be a wiki CATEGORY too. Can someone working in this area categorize? Smilo Don 13:26, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Homo Technologicus?

Food for thought: I've always wondered if we should have a new category with something like "Homo Technologicus". After all, we all are now so dependent on nutrician, medicine, hygene, surgery (including Caesarean sections) that it might not be possible to continue without technology. --Neilrieck (talk) 12:38, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely not. That would not be appropriate for Wikipedia. The only things that are appropriate are those things we can cite with verifiable and reliable sources. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:28, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

My apologies. I never thought that Wikipedia should create this title. It was a suggestion for academia. In hindsight I can see that my thoughts might be more the realm of philosophy rather than biology. Thanks for catching my faux pas. --Neilrieck 22:35, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

A big revert...

In this edit a large number of new 'species' where added. This is an area of controversy as there are two groups of people; Lumpers: those that want to find as small as possible set of species within Homo: Splitters: those that every new skullcup constitutes a new species. My symapthies lie with the former. I don't think we should have any links here without a solid source or a blue link to a page.

The same user that added so many new species also added this edit quoting source 'homo hierarchy classification by systema naturae 2004, Taxonomicon'. I can not find any references to a version of systema naturae published in 2004. I can find a version from 2000 here which shows a far more limited and feasible homo tree here

Since I know I am biased towards the Lumper view I thought I should discuss before changing.

GameKeeper (talk) 23:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I have done the revert now , I tried to keep the valid edits since the big addition, here are the edits I kept.GameKeeper (talk) 14:45, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

LOL?

"Homo sapiens sapiens (Wise Man) discovered 1758". Is this some kind of joke? --212.247.27.5 (talk) 13:56, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Its not a joke, its just the wrong word has been used. It should not say discovered it should say classified. 1758 was the date when Linnaeus published the 10th edition of the Systema Naturae which is the basis of zoological nomenclature. Most recently discovered creatures are classified and discovered on similar dates which is why the inconsistency has occurred. I am planning a big revert when I get time. So am not going to correct this now. GameKeeper (talk) 14:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

How many species of homo are there?

Just curious, is this all the known species of homo? I noticed there's a tension between the "splitters" and the "lumpers" which complicates things, but are there any informed guesses on how many species of homo there may be in reality, including ones we haven't yet discovered?VatoFirme (talk) 17:40, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you see that tree outside your window? No, not that one, the other one. Yeah that one. How many leaves did it ever have and will ever have? You question is as meaningless as mine. There is not way to know if all of a genus' species are known. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:13, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

There really aren't that many species of the Homo Genus. The ones known would be a rather low number, somewhere around 100. I don't see why it's a meaningless question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.65.180.46 (talk) 02:53, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Isn't the Cro-Magnon man one of the sub-species of Homo sapiens? In high school, I had learnt that the Neanderthal Man was called Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Cro-Magnon man was called Homo sapiens fossilis, the present human species Homo sapiens sapiens & future man will be called Homo sapiens futuralis (or Homo sapiens futuris). Can anyone shed any light on this? 59.184.134.9 (talk) 11:32, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Any number we give would be artificial due to the difficulty of defining species, especially when all you have to go on are fragmentary bones. Who is to say where the color aquamarine ends and the color blue starts? The classifications are our best attempt to put categories on things that resist static categories. So like Uther said, the number is meaningless, it is just a tool to help us with the mathmatical way our brains are wired and it will always be changing and debated as more information is found. The more important question is how those species/individual fossils fit into the larger tree. Nowimnthing (talk) 13:48, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

To answer the question we would need a very firm definition of species , which we simply do not have. See the Species problem for some discussion. See Ring species for an interesting example of a species problems. Those articles do not mention the problems when time separates organisms . The standard species definition 'a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring' becomes hard to interpret when the organisms concerned are separated by large time spans. It could be that 4 time separated organisms A,B,C,D could each interbreed with the next one but A and D could not. Indeed this must happen for separate species to share a common ancestor. GameKeeper (talk) 20:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Image

Someone included this image image:RussianRainbowGathering 4Aug2005.jpg as the image for this article, which I reverted as I did not think it was a sufficiently suitable image to illustrate homo as a genus. As i think more about it I could be wrong, we should be illustrating homo with its most common species the human . Image:PPlaqueB.png is used on the human article. Just to be different perhaps an example of Vitruvian Man wuld be good. I like this because it gives a sense of the physical proportions of a member of the homo(genus). I like this from commons Image:Homem Vitruviano - Da Vinci.jpg GameKeeper (talk) 22:08, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

That was me. As I was patrolling the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Articles without images/Mammals, I noticed that hardly any of the Hominidae articles (prehistoric AND modern) had taxobox images. I purposely edited this article and none of the higher taxa because I wanted to see how the community would respond before adding the same image to those articles as well. I found it odd that these articles don't have an image, yet Human does. Since I find the image on Human a bit undignifying to members of both sexes, I was looking for an image of a clothed human. Because I was in a hurry, this was the best I came up with. However, that Da Vinci image is tempting...especially since it's such a well-known model and I think fewer people take offense to it. Is there another version that includes less detail? I know I've seen them with that section sort of blurred. (I think you know which details I'm talking about) Bob the Wikipedian (talk) 05:20, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Nice choice, I see you have used a Neanderthal skull. It's hard to offend others with a skull, so that should work very well. Bob the Wikipedian (talk) 20:33, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

It bothers me tremendously, though.Levalley (talk) 02:01, 26 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

Problems with the article that an expert should address

1. Bones are not the only evidence of a species' existence. Homo habilis, for example, is often dated to 2.6 MYA based on tool culture (Olduwan). 2. Species for which there is only one bit of fossil evidence should be excluded from the main discussion and treated in another section. 3. An overall discussion of how one gets into the genus (the cerebral rubicon, for example) needs to be added. 4. If molecular evidence is going to be referenced, it should get a little explanation. 5. The distinction between archaic Homo sapiens and FMHS (as used by many, many contemporary anthropologists like Alan Thorne and a whole crew of others) should be mentioned.Levalley (talk) 02:00, 26 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

Article move?

It's not a huge issue, but generally if one definition is particularly notable compared to the others, especially if there are few, it tends to live at the undisambiguated location. In this case Homo disambiguates here, to HOMO/LUMO, homogenised milk, homosexual, Swedish Ombudsman against Discrimination on Grounds of Sexual Orientation, and The Man Who Laughs. I recommend Homo be moved to Homo (disambiguation), Homo (genus) be moved to Homo and the otheruses template used. - BalthCat (talk) 17:37, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

WHERE IS THE CORECT DATE?! LIKE B.C. OR A.D.?!?!?!?!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.165.101.226 (talk) 16:59, 20 October 2009 (UTC) 

12 down 1 to go

12 spieces have already become extint and the 13th one will eventually face the inevitable soon...

And what exactly do you guys mean by "Many" or "Few?" Doesn't seem very informative...

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move. Jafeluv (talk) 13:30, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

---

Homo (genus) → Homo — This appears to be the primary topic for the term Homo. Homo (genus) got 39000 pageviews in January, compared to 9400 for Homo, 5000 for HOMO/LUMO and 50 for the Swedish ombudsman against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. Ucucha 04:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Homo → Homo (disambiguation)

• Support I have to agree that the genus appears to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.--Labattblueboy (talk) 04:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose usage on Wikipedia does not show primary topic, only Wikipedia usage. In North America, I'm pretty sure it means "homosexual", unless you go grocery shopping, then it means "homogenized milk". 70.29.210.242 (talk) 05:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - Wikipedia is an international reference work not bound by uncited claims concerning an individual country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Odea (talk • contribs) 08:30, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment in relation to the US, certainly recent usage is more about gays than anything else, considering the firestorm over Dontaskdonttell. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 05:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• There is no disagreement that homo is also used as a pejorative term for homosexuality but the stats appear to indicate that people are not making searches on that basis. A search of reliable sources[1][2] also appears to show the genus is the more prominent term. --Labattblueboy (talk) 14:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support -- Quiddity (talk) 21:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support. The genus is the primary encyclopedic usage even if not the most common in the language. (cf. Nice). — AjaxSmack 20:03, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support, as per nom. —innotata (Talk • Contribs) 21:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support as per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC - UtherSRG (talk) 15:55, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support - per nom. Rlendog (talk) 01:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Genus age citation

Hi there. I ran across a "citation needed" tag for the age of the Homo genus in this article. I looked at the Human evolution article and found two references for an age of 2.3 to 2.4 myo. I added the two citations from Human evolution here, and changed the text from 2.5 to 2.3-2.4. --Smoggyrob | Talk 23:09, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Why is the title italic?

Just curious :) Iokerapid (talk) 11:26, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Scientific convention: scientific names of genera, species and subspecies (but not higher taxa) are all put in italics. WP has a special code to make the article title (or part of it) show in italics, as in this case, which is the name of a genus. Richard New Forest (talk) 13:17, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Homo Habilis

Hello, I think it would be appropriate to change the "Lived when" column in the Species'table for the Homo Habilis. Although exact dates are not clear, 1.7 million years is clearly an underestimation. For example, the Wikipedia entry for the Homo Habilis says "2.3 to 1.4" million years ago, and the Britannica web page says "2 to 1.5 million years ago" (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/270419/Homo-habilis). This would mean that the Homo Habilis should appear first in the table, as the oldest member of the Homo genus. Please let me know what you think.(DanteEspinoza1989 (talk) 18:37, 2 April 2010 (UTC))

you are perfectly right. H. habilis is the earliest member of the Homo genus almost by defintion. The article should go into more detail on the history of how paleoanthropoogists have drawn the line between Homo and Australopithecus. The idea, afaik, was that by definition the appearance of tools marked the appearance of the genus. I.e. the line was not drawn on (barely attested) physiological grounds. Now it appears that there is A. garhi which also had tools so the line between the genera is even more arbitrary than was originally believed. Nevertheless, H. habilis is the first Homo, anything earlier is labelled Australopithecus. --dab (𒁳) 11:44, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for answering, I will procede with the changes then.(DanteEspinoza1989 (talk) 16:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC))

Edit request from DanteEspinoza1989, 4 April 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} I would like to propose a change in the Homo article, specifically in the "Comparative table of Homo species" in the "Species" section of the article. In the third row ("Homo Habilis"), the "Lived when" column should be changed, since 1.7 million years is clearly an understimation according to these sources: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/270419/Homo-habilis (2 million years) and the Wikipedia entry for the Homo Habilis (2.3 million years). This would mean that the Homo Habilis should appear first in the table, as the oldest member of the Homo genus. 1.7 should be changed to 2 million years ago. The 1.4 estimation should stay the same. (DanteEspinoza1989 (talk) 17:47, 4 April 2010 (UTC))

DanteEspinoza1989 (talk) 17:47, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

of course -- sorry, I did not realize you were not yet able to edit the sprotected article. I will do that edit for you. You should be able to edit yourself after you do a handful of edits to other articles. --dab (𒁳) 19:49, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

In fact, the table is at Template:Homo which is not protected and whih you are welcome to edit. --dab (𒁳) 19:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

"Homo sapiens" trouble

I was going through this and the related pages, and found there to be all kinds of wierdness in the Homo sapiens related pages. First of all just plain Homo sapiens redirects to human. Then Homo sapiens sapiens redirects to anatomically modern humans. In the middle of all this, there ends up being no sound way to get to Homo sapiens idaltu. I finally settled on having Homo sapiens in this page direct you to anatomically modern humans.

Beyond that, more work is needed, and I think that the community needs to decide how to handle this. For one, the extent of "Homo sapiens" is subject to some controversy, and that should be detailed in an article under the title of Homo sapiens. For some, Homo sapiens is just modern humans. For others, it is expanded to include "archaic Homo sapiens" and the Neanderthals. I gather that the most common use is the one represented here in Wikipedia, but issue of just what Homo sapiens is is enough to justify its own article. (It should include a link to human in its first sentence, but should not just plain redirect there.)

EMS | Talk 21:42, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

That's what I was trying to say recently, in the 5th comment at Talk:Human#Human vs. Homo. Bloomin' confusing! Expert cleanup required. -- Quiddity (talk) 02:22, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

And if I had been around to vote on your proposal, I would have opposed it too! Human is a wonderful article, and is appropriate under that title. I would also note that its taxonomy infobox refers to humans as "Homo sapiens sapiens" [emphasis mine]. So IMO, Homo sapiens sapiens should redirect there. Maybe the short term solution is to switch the redirects, but no doubt someone would switch them back (or at least the Homo sapiens one) if we did that.

That is why I figure that we need an article for Homo sapiens itself, stating what that designation is and nothing the controversy and ambiguity that surrounds it. Maybe I will take a crack at it soon, but it will be something of a mind dump and not well referenced if I do it. --EMS | Talk 04:59, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

(I didn't propose anything. I just made the 5th comment in that thread, stating that I had been confused by the mixture of terminology used in our articles... ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 05:03, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Homo Sapiens page

I have a start for a Homo sapiens page at User:Ems57fcva/sandbox/Homo_sapiens. Comments and improvements will be appreciated. EMS | Talk 19:27, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate the idea. But this shouldn't become so much a new article but a merge target for the existing anatomically modern humans and archaic Homo sapiens. Once we have a dedicated article on the full 200ky of H. sapiens history (which happens to be marginalized in Human as 97% of that history is in the Stone Age and as such in human prehistory), we do not require a separate article on anatomically modern humans any longer (in fact, anatomically modern humans was the attempt to create a Homo sapiens article without needing to change the Homo sapiens redirect. --dab (𒁳) 12:45, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

File:Kermanshah Neanderthal.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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Homo Erectus

The homo erectus article (and the various subspecies articles) gives no data on weight, while the table in this article gives 60 kg as a typical weight. Given the typical height noted, that creates an average BMI of about 17.5. Was homo erectus really anorexic by modern aesthetic standards? Given the various information we have about skeletal structure, I'm more inclined to believe this is spurious data, but does anyone know for sure? Rhialto (talk) 12:00, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 68.227.225.58, 25 September 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} Please update the reference to H. gautengensis. H. gautengensis lived between 2 million and 600,000 years ago. A partial skull was discovered in 1977 in South Africa's Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg* , not May, 2010.

In May, 2010, anthropologist Dr. Darren Curnoe, of the UNSW School of Biological, Earth Environmental Sciences identified and named the partial skull H. gautengensis, after having undertaken a restoration and fresh reconstruction of the fossilized skull.**

*Wikipedia.com website, accessed September 24, 2011: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_gautengensis

• • The University of New South Wales website, accessed September 24, 2011 : http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/new-species-of-human/

Please check the two cites for verification. Thank you. 68.227.225.58 (talk) 00:27, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Where should we add this information? I can't see any obvious place; please could you re-request, saying exactly which part should be changed. Thanks,  Chzz  ►  04:20, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Table Editing

The date for the discovery of homo antecessor appears to be incorrect (should be 1994, not 1997). However, it is not clear how to edit this table, as it does not appear within the "edit" frame for the article.Ryoung122 18:53, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

This text is in the template {{Homo}}, there are links just above it to "view-talk-edit" click the edit link and you can edit the template. Keith D (talk) 11:15, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Italicized Title?

I don't Wiki often but I notice the title of this page is italicized for no apparent reason. Motion to revert? 66.108.74.225 (talk) 06:47, 28 January 2012 (UTC)