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Concept
Homo
Summary
Homo () is the genus that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses the extant species Homo sapiens (modern humans) and several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely related to modern humans, including Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with records of just over 2 million years ago. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably sister to Australopithecus africanus, which itself had split from the lineage of Pan, the chimpanzees.
Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago and spread throughout Africa (where it is called H. ergaster) and Eurasia in several migrations. It is likely that this first human species lived in a hunter-gatherer society and was able to control fire. An adaptive and successful species, H. erectus persisted for more than a million years and gradually diverged into new species by around 500,000 years ago.
Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged close to 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, in Africa, and H. neanderthalensis emerged around the same time in Europe and Western Asia. H. sapiens dispersed from Africa in several waves, from possibly as early as 250,000 years ago, and certainly by 130,000 years ago, with the so-called Southern Dispersal beginning about 70–50,000 years ago leading to the lasting colonisation of Eurasia and Oceania by 50,000 years ago. H. sapiens met and interbred with archaic humans in Africa and in Eurasia. Separate archaic (non-sapiens) human species are thought to have survived until around 40,000 years ago (Neanderthal extinction).
Human taxonomyNames for the human species and Homininae
The Latin noun homō (genitive hominis) means "human being" or "man" in the generic sense of "human being, mankind". The binomial name Homo sapiens was coined by Carl Linnaeus (1758). Names for other species of the genus were introduced from the second half of the 19th century (H. neanderthalensis 1864, H. erectus 1892).
The genus Homo has not been strictly defined, even today.
Official source
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