To Be Sapiens and Human

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Before we look at our history, let us ask ourselves some basic questions. You know how we describe ourselves, right? We say that we are humans or human beings. Or we say we are men and women. Of course, we also say we are people. Scientists say we are Homo sapiens or just Sapiens. Do all those terms point to the same specie?

Who Are We Actually?

Who are humans? Who are Sapiens? Do we, actually know, who we are? What does it mean to be human? For centuries, philosophers, poets, and other thinkers tried to answer this question. In most cases, that question was about that sublime creature, which has a conscience, morality, spirituality, and able to create philosophy and sciences. There is a short article by Maria Popova at Brain Pickings site about that approach, Here, however, we are talking about a literal sense of the word human. In this post, I look into what does it mean to be human from a zoological and classification viewpoint.

If we want to look at the history of humanity we have to know who are members of humankind. Humankind is a big congregation of humans. That is clear, but it begs for a question. How do we know that we are humans or Sapiens? There are two ways. The first way is to look at the definition of the term human and compare it with yourself and the people around you. Second, by comparison to some specie, who is not human or Sapiens.

Does it look easy? It is not.

Meaning of Humans, Men and Homo

What is the meaning of the term man and human? The English word human is rooted in the Latin humanus. It is thought that the humanus is a relative to the word homo. The latter one, in turn, means man. 

The spelling of humans became usual in the 18th century. The term man appeared from the Proto-Germanic language. This term refers to the species or to humanity as a whole. Later we named ourselves as humans. In other words, human and man terms interlink. We could say that in 18th-century humans, men and homo described the same species – us. 

Do you wonder why the word woman is excluded from our consideration so far? Well, it was a long-standing tradition. Women emancipation was not in place when the link between man and human words was established.  

The name human is in common usage. Common name, or we could call it a specific name, for species is like your first name. You know yourself, and you do not need to name yourself with both first name, which is your specific name, and second name all the time.

What if you have a lot of siblings? Then people outside your family may call all of your siblings by first and last name together. All kids of your parents carry the same second name. That is your family name. 

Humans Are Living Things

       Humans are animals. Of course, we would say that we have something which other animals do not. Yet, we still are animals. Let us not forget what an evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist William Tecumseh Fitch reminded us in his speech at the 2017 International Convention of Psychological Science in Vienna. ‘Every living thing from bacteria to daffodils shares our basic genetic code‘. As a species, we have our place in the zoological classification. The place is Sapiens in genus Homo.

That place differentiates us from all other living things on this planet. This is why we should name ourselves by our scientific name – Homo sapiens. That is our fundamentals. All other names should be compared with the meaning of Homo sapiens name. 

Based on which facts the above classification was drawn? Which facts support it nowadays? We may look into it later.

Move Second One to a First Place

Scientific names include two different types of name.

One of them is a specific one, like your first name. The other one is generic, like your second name. In your personal name, your first name comes first, and the second name comes second. The opposite is true for zoological names. 

In scientific name, scholars put family name first, and specific name last. In Homo sapiens, a name Sapiens describes one specific specie. The name Homo represents the “family” to which Sapiens belongs. In this case, such a “family” is called the genus. Sapiens and Neanderthals are siblings in the genus Homo. Such schema was designed to make a naming for any animal species a unique one. 

It looks like that, without a big mistake, we could interchangeably use the words history of humankind, mankind, or humanity. I will use all of those words in my blog posts. 

The scientific name for us – Homo sapiens – was coined by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. Sapiens means ‘wisdom, understanding’, and was, probably derived from old French sapient, which means ‘wise’. From our scientific name came a shortcut – Sapiens. All members of nowadays mankind population are Sapiens.  

History Is Not Carved in Stone

History is a science. In sciences, not everything is carved in stone. Like you, sciences have a life, especially if they started as a non-science.As it appears, the zoological classification, created by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, was not based on scientific evidence. 

  There are different kinds of definitions used in history. Some of them are very hard to change. We already know that the current meaning of the beginning of mankind history is that kind. Some definitions adapt to newly available knowledge and will adjust accordingly. The term human is that kind of term. 

  At Carl Linnaeus time, no other than Homo sapiens members of genus Homo were known. That implies that humans, genus Homo, and Homo sapiens were associated with the same species. 

Unlike Carl Linnaeus, we aware that there were several human species in the genus Homo. Respectfully, a modern definition of what is human looks like this. ‘Human is any individual of the genus Homo, especially a member of the species Homo sapiens.’ By the count done in 2019, there were, at least, seven species in the genus Homo. 

You could see a reconstruction of several members of the genus Homo along with Homo Sapiens in a video ‘Is human evolution over?’ by Smithsonian magazine. This image appeared at 17 sec in the video. It is courtesy of the Human Origins Program of Smithsonian Institute and made by John Gurche, reconstruction artist.

We are still the same species, Homo sapiens. We know that humans, as well as men, are associated with homo or Homo. In other words, based on current knowledge, the term human includes all species under the genus Home umbrella – Sapiens, Neanderthals, and many more. 

What have we now when the dust settles? We could look at the history of all humans since the first appearance of humans on Earth around 2 million years ago. In that case, we have to include in that history not only Homo sapiens but Homo neanderthalensis and many others. Alternatively, we could look only at the history of Homo sapiens. Then we should carefully consider how to define the beginning of that history. Go to Comments on this blog post.

For my book “Subsurface History of Humanity: Direction of History” – go to amazon marketplaces (paperback, Kindle book, and audiobook), and for the audiobook – go to Audible or iTunes. The audiobook comes with a supplemental digital booklet.

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