Human taxonomy is the classification of the species Homo sapiens, or the modern
hominin, humans. Homo, the human genus, includes the past genetic tree of
humanity, with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other extinct species of hominin. H.
sapiens is the only surviving species of the genus Homo. Extinct Homo species
include archaic humans. Current humans have been designated as subspecies Homo
sapiens sapiens, differentiated from the direct ancestor, Homo sapiens idaltu.
Prior to the current scientific classification of humans, philosophers
and scientists have made various attempts to classify humans. They
offered definitions of the human being and schemes for classifying types of
humans. Biologists once classified races as subspecies, but today anthropologists
reject the concept of race and view humanity as an interrelated genetic
continuum. Taxonomy of the hominins continues to evolve..
Current issues in human taxonomy Generally, humans are considered the
only surviving representatives of the genus Homo.
Scientists have also debated whether any other branches of Homo, such as
Neanderthals, should be classified as separate species or subspecies of H.
sapiens. These distinctions are connected with two competing theories of
human origins, the more common recent single-origin hypothesis and the
multiregional hypothesis. Modern humans have some genes that originally arose in
archaic human populations, composing perhaps 5% of our genetic inheritance.
History of human taxonomy Human taxonomy has involved both placing
humans within the hominid family and classifying types of humans within the
species. = History of classifying the human
species= As recorded in the Hebrew Bible, ancient
Hebrews classified humans as a kind of living soul. Living things were said to
beget their own kind, a group broader than the scientific species. Humans were
said to comprise a single kind. Humans have long been considered
animals. Plato referred to humans as featherless biped animals, and Aristotle
defined the human being as the "rational animal" or the "political animal".
Classic and medieval taxonomy grouped living things according to
characteristics, and classifying humans as animals meant that they have various
animal characteristics. Modern taxonomy, on the other hand, classifies organisms
according to evolutionary lines of descent. Current opposition to
classifying humans as animals arises from this modern definition of what it
means to be an animal. When Linnaeus defined humans as Homo
sapiens in 1758, they were the only members of the genus Homo. The first
other species to be classified a Homo was H. neanderthalensis, classified in
1864. Since then, ten additional extinct species have been classified as Homo.
In a common misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, each species
represents a stage in the evolutionary track, some "more evolved" and others
further behind. Based on this misunderstanding, scientists thought of
humans as having descended from modern apes and expected to find the "missing
link," a living species halfway between apes and humans. Remnants of beliefs
related to the Great Chain of Being were not only the origin of the term "missing
link", but through the concept that a perfect creator would create things
perfectly, extinction would be impossible and any species that ever
lived would still be alive in some part of the world, awaiting discovery.
= History of classifying types of humans=
Europeans in the Middle Ages considered humanity to be divided into three races,
one for each of the sons of Noah. This concept was so powerful when Europeans
discovered the Americas some of them considered the indigenous peoples to be
soulless animals. Races were once considered human
subspecies, but genetic research shows that inherited differences do not
accurately match common racial divisions. For example, since
non-Africans are descended from a small population that emigrated from Africa
about 100,000 years ago, non-Africans are more closely related to each other
than Africans are to each other. See also
Timeline of human evolution References
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