This is an archive of past discussions about Human. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Wikipedia uses the widely accepted scientific consensus, not the numbers stated by some religions no matter how "right" those religions say their numbers are. But Kohelet and Rivertorch, we can easily handle this without belittling the IP user (or an entire country's educational system). Anomie⚔03:45, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
The universe is just about 6,013 years old, the first generation was of Adam and Eve, 9 generations later, Noah saved the animals from extinction. The reason for fossils was because of the Great Flood
of Noah, dinosaurs had children that grew slower. Species found to be entirely fossilized doesn't mean there's no more live species of the creature. The live creatures are just difficult to find. Semitics, Hemitics, and Japhetics spread across the globe, the Tower of Babel was where unique language was invented, causing mass confusion. Our existence is not a blip in the timeline. In the beginning, God made them male and female. We were made in God's image. We originated not from Africa, but from the Garden of Eden, somewhere in Southern Mesopotamia? They spread across Africa, and the rest of Eurasia around Hittitite times? Australia had its first tribes somewhere around 4,500 years ago? The Americas around 4,500 years ago? We found remote islands such as Hawaii, Easter Island, Madagascar, and New Zealand between the years AD 300 and 1280. So the 200,000 years of humanity / 5,000,000,000 years of the Solar System / 13,700,000,000 years of universe history is wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.51.28.219 (talk) 11:49, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and the Sun revolves around the Earth, Santa Claus uses magic to keep the soot off his suit, and Fox News is fair and balanced. Tell you what, though: if you do find, say, a brachiosaurus lurking in the shrubbery, please take a picture and upload it to Commons. Rivertorch (talk) 16:07, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The word "theory"
I have a question or objection. The anatomical adaptations section says "There are several theories of the adaptational value of bipedalism. It is possible that bipedalism was favored because it freed up the hands for reaching and carrying food, because it saved energy during locomotion, because it enabled long distance running and hunting, or as a strategy for avoiding hyperthermia by reducing the surface exposed to direct sun." But Theory says "A theory is not the same as a hypothesis, as a theory is a 'proven' hypothesis, that, in other words, has never been disproved through experiment, and has a basis in fact." I am not trained in this area, but it seems to me that Human needs to be revised. Tom Haws (talk) 21:51, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
That is unfortunately a problem with the article "theory", in science a theory is not simply a proven hypothesis, but a proposed explanation for an observed fact, an explanation from which hypotheses can be derived which in turn can be tested to provide support for or challenge for the theory. It is not possible to test whether humans developed bipedalism for any specific reason, but one can make a theory that suggests that a specific reason was decisive, and from that theory a number of hypotheses can then be derived and tested. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·22:11, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure we're not insects. Someone might want to correct that but I didn't see a clear revert point and I don't know enough taxonomy to fix it myself. §FreeRangeFrogcroak18:36, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
When I saw the image of the Asian couple I did not feel it was there to illustrate something related to the topic but rather I felt that someone put this image to convey some political or ideological message. I believe everybody knows how modern humans look like and there is no need to illustrate modern humans with an image. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.57.6.25 (talk) 11:54, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
The image has been discussed, see the archives. As far as ideology, yeah, I guess the idea that we use pictures to illustrate things? That is the closest to an 'ideology' there. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:37, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
In Human#Evolution I found this sentence: "Each of these have been argued to be a bipedal ancestor of later hominins, but in each cases the claims have been contested."
Shouldn't that be "Each of these HAS been argued to be..."? Anyway, for sure "in each cases" is wrong ("case" is the correct form). I brought this up here since I cannot edit the article as it is semi-protected. Dontreader (talk) 07:13, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
"It is also possible that either of these species are ancestors of another branch of African apes, or that they represent a shared ancestor between hominins and other apes." I believe that "either" is followed by the singular form, so I think it should be perhaps like this: "It is also possible that either of these species is an ancestor of another branch of African apes, or that they represent a shared ancestor between hominins and other apes."
Please read rule 11. I hope that helps. I cannot edit the article myself. On a separate note, I think humans are called apes in the article more than once, which might be unwise as it adds unnecessary controversy, in my opinion. Humans are primates, and there is no consensus on calling them apes. Dontreader (talk) 02:42, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, Martin Hogbin, for your help. I will create a new section in a moment regarding humans being called apes, which I find very controversial, academically wrong, and unnecessarily insensitive to some readers. Dontreader (talk) 22:42, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
I changed the wording just for consistency and because apes is a non-technical term. In what way do you consider the terminology controversial and who do you thing would be offended by calling humans apes? Would they also be offended by referring to humans as animals? Martin Hogbin (talk) 23:04, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Actually, Martin Hogbin, I think the term "ape" or "apes" should remain in the article or else it would get too technical and difficult to read for most people (in my opinion). In fact, I regret that you changed the word "apes" to something else in that sentence because it was a misunderstanding, so I created a new topic about humans being called apes; however, your grammatical correction is very much appreciated by me, as I said above. You asked who would be offended by calling humans apes. Well, when I was attending biology classes back in the 80s, I would say everyone because in those days humans were not considered to be apes; instead, you had humans, and you had apes, such as gorillas, chimpanzees, etc., all having a common ancestor (yes, I believe we are all animals). The term "apes" in the movies called "Planet of the Apes" was not intended to include humans. Anyway, based on what I had studied (which has changed, I learned last night), calling humans apes will inevitably anger fundamentalists of certain religions, and I know that some "militant" atheists love to do that because I've seen it happen many times elsewhere. I suspect (just a theory) that some of the vandalism that has taken place in the editing has been done by fundamentalists, so I thought it would help to not call humans apes. However, I am very religious but not a fundamentalist, and I am a man of science as well, so once it was explained to me last night that nowadays humans are called apes, I dropped my case. Thanks again for your help. Dontreader (talk) 20:30, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Why are humans being called apes? Am I failing to see the proper context?
Since I cannot edit this article, I must raise a concern here. I'm not an expert on the matter, but why are humans being called apes in the article? Humans are primates, and experts will find other ways to classify them, but unless I'm not seeing the context properly, I'm perplexed to see the following statements:
"The pattern of human postnatal brain growth differs from that of other apes (heterochrony), and allows for extended periods of social learning and language acquisition in juvenile humans."
I believe "other apes" is wrong since it implies that humans are apes. One solution could be to take out the word "other", like this:
"The pattern of human postnatal brain growth differs from that of apes (heterochrony), and allows for extended periods of social learning and language acquisition in juvenile humans."
Or perhaps:
"The pattern of human postnatal brain growth differs from that of other primates (heterochrony), and allows for extended periods of social learning and language acquisition in juvenile humans."
Another potentially wrong statement is this one (the following sentence - probably the same editor):
"However, the differences between the structure of human brains and those of other apes may be even more significant than differences in size."
I propose that if "other" is taken out of the first sentence, then replace "apes" with "primates" in the second sentence (or the other way around).
Here's another mistake, I believe, in Human#Biology:
"Humans, like most of the other apes, lack external tail, have several blood type systems, opposable thumbs, and are sexually dimorphic."
I think "apes" should be replaced with "primates" (or another suitable word), but certainly "apes" has to go.
And in the same section:
"All non-human apes are capable of giving birth until death."
In my opinion this gives the impression that some apes are human, so I think it should be corrected, but I don't have solid suggestions since if "apes" is changed to "primates" (for example), then I don't know if the statement applies to all non-human primates.
Another mistake:
"The mental abilities of humans are remarkable compared to other apes."
I would take out "other" since "primates" is in the following sentence. Also, in Human#Biological variation:
"Compared to the other great apes, human gene sequences – even among African populations – are remarkably homogeneous."
That's not so bad, in my opinion, but I think a special note should be included next to "great apes", exactly like the one in the article Great apes to show that there is no consensus regarding the meaning of this term.
"In summary, there are three common uses of the term "ape": non-biologists may not distinguish between "monkeys" and "apes", or may use "ape" for any tailless monkey or non-human hominoid, whereas biologists traditionally used the term "ape" for all non-human hominoids as shown above."
So I'm not seeing scientific consensus on the term "ape" as including "humans". If there is no consensus, why is it being used? I will find more examples to prove that there is no consensus. Please give me a few minutes. Thanks again. Dontreader (talk) 03:17, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
The point is that the scientific consensus has changed. The 'traditional' usage of 'ape' isn't compatible with the monophyletic classification scheme now generally preferred in biology. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:28, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, AndyTheGrump. I see your point and the mistake I made; however, here's a current definition of ape from an online encyclopedia to show once again that there doesn't seem to be consensus even at this point in time (I will post more examples later unless I give up):
Thanks again, AndyTheGrump. I thought it was worth asking because many Wikipedians have agendas, but you and Rivertorch have brought up solid arguments, and I appreciate your replies. I'm too old. Back in the 80s I was taught something different. Thanks again. Dontreader (talk) 05:08, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Only in the US
Please correct me if I am wrong but what I think what I am seeing here is a fight between one editor who, for some unexplained reason, is greatly concerned about what seems to be a minor taxonomic detail and other editors who I presume to suspect the first editor of being a creationist.
I would, obviously, strongly resist any move to bring a religious opinion into a scientific article but equally I see no reason to attempt to bang home some anti-creationist point (humans are apes). I changed 'apes' to 'Hominoidea' for precision and consistency, as the sentence already contained one Latin taxon, and not because I feared it might offend some, as yet unspecified, group of people.
In general English terms like 'ape' are less precisely defined than the Latin terms like ones like 'Hominoidea' (as the Ape article makes clear) and should be preferred in a technical context, although I see no harm in using the English words where appropriate. This is not the place to spell out the latest advances in taxonomy. Can I ask that we all concern ourselves with improving the article and not fighting out some battle which could only happen in the US. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:47, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
The complaint was that using the term 'ape' to refer to humans was insensitive. Dontreader has yet to tell us exactly what is meant by this. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:10, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Hello, AndyTheGrump. Yes indeed, I admitted that you were right. I believe the title of this new topic (Only in the US) is unnecessary and it shows contempt for others, with no reason. For the record, I was not born nor raised in the US. I strongly disagree with both atheists and fundamentalist religious people, but I respect them. I think Martin Hogbin has apologized to you, so that's enough for me, but I think that sort of inflammatory approach should be avoided. Anyway, if I find other ways to improve the article, I will come back here. Many thanks. Dontreader (talk) 20:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
I think you misunderstood.
e.g. A lawyer eating a salad, their food could only have come from a human pollinator process, the logistics of the obtaining the salad had more to do with being a social species with hands. But my question was are humans, as a species (the word "human" should imply that), in a pollinator-feeder niche? 2601:7:1A00:27D:FCDD:AAF0:AB1D:F51B (talk) 11:00, 21 October 2013 (UTC)Drrake (talk) 11:03, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Not per se. However, one might assume you were proposing changing the article per your hypothesis. The purpose of a talk page is to discuss the content of the associated article, not the topic the article is about. Even if one is going about that obliquely by musing "aloud" first, it generally helps to have a source to lend credence to one's thoughts. Otherwise, it can be very interesting but it's a dead-end discussion in terms of improving the article, since we can't add original research. Rivertorch (talk) 06:10, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Why is the main picture for the article one of Asian people rather than white?
Why are there blacks on the page at all?
Why isn't there a section about video games? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.8.109.126 (talk) 12:28, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
In the first two cases, to illustrate the diversity of the human species. In the third instance, you may be looking for the topic of humans in games and fiction, rather than a scientific article about the species. You may want to look at the articles listed under "in fiction" at Human (disambiguation), since there is currently no overall page on this topic. Anaxial (talk) 12:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Syntax Edit
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
This sentence needs a slight adjustment for syntax:
Despite pygmy populations of South East Asia (Andamanese) have similar physical features with African pygmy populations such as short stature, dark skin, and curly hair, they are not genetically closely related to these populations.[167]
to
Despite pygmy populations of South East Asia (Andamanese) having similar physical features with African pygmy populations such as short stature, dark skin, and curly hair, they are not genetically closely related to these populations.[167]
Under habitat and population is the line: " Currently, through land development, combustion of fossil fuels, and pollution, humans are thought to be the main contributor to global climate change.[61] If this continues at its current rate it is predicted that climate change will wipe out half of all species over the next century."
Half of ALL species seems improbable to me, considering that bacteria make up the majority of life and may not be affected much by climate change. Can someone confirm what this is referring to or fact-check it?
After a quick Google search, I found a news article citing that scientists at the University of York and the University of Leeds estimate half of all plant and animal species.
The Wikipedia page on Extinction states it as: "Biologist E. O. Wilson estimated [6] in 2002 that if current rates of human destruction of the biosphere continue, one-half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in 100 years." (citing Future Life, 2002). I don't have the text on hand to confirm, but an interview with E. O. Wilson quotes him as saying "half the species of plants and animals by the end of the century."
I suggest that the statement 1) be checked for correctness, and 2) cite the source of the statement in the text of the article (eg "E. O. Wilson predicts that...") because this may not be an established fact agreed on by the scientific community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zincfingers (talk • contribs) 08:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
I suspect Wilson was referring to plant and animal species. The Wilson citation doesn't include a page number. Anyone have ready access to the book? Rivertorch (talk) 14:25, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree. I respect EO Wilson as much as anyone, but if these claims can't be passed along without appealing to his towering reputation, they should not be passed along at all. It doesn't matter that a great man such as E.O. says these things, everyone has to say them; I mean they have to be the clear consensus of experts in the field. Chrisrus (talk) 00:07, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Okay, I've made the correction. I suspect someone just made the assumption that all plants and animals meant all life, but if I'm wrong, feel free to revert the change.Zincfingers (talk) 18:17, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
It's an interesting idea, but maybe strains the definition, or original intent of the category. The category "urban animals" was to be a collection of animals that have thrived or adapted especially well in the artificial environments intended not for them but for people. Nevertheless, I'd say go ahead. Chrisrus (talk) 00:20, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Just log in. Choose a screen name such as "unknowneditor123" or some such and you'll be more anonymous than editing under your IP address which Google tells everyone in seconds is in Coffeyville, Kansas. Chrisrus (talk) 02:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
No ape language
Please listen to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnZS9EcZEw0 lecture by Robert Spolsky and be convinced that, contrary to popular belief, no ape has ever used sign language. Therefore, there is no reason for us to contrast ape language abilities with those of humans. The closest things to language found in the natural world are not found among the most intelligent of animals, but in some of the most highly social. There might be a place, therefore, in the article to contrast human language with bee dance and prairie dog "language". In bee dance, there are a large amount of possible variations that the can "say" to each other, such as (Food source two units away, two degrees angle from the sun; very high quality food source three units away, three degrees angle from the sun) and so on. Prairie dogs can communicate the ideas, Human biologist named "yip yap yap yap yip" slowly moving across the colony; hunter named "yap squeak yap yip" standing still near colony; familiar raptor in air near colony; unfamiliar raptor in tree near colony; coyote relaxing at a distance; and so on. While there are many, many possible ideas communicated, at the same time as you can see they are all variation on just one idea, so they while they aren't unlimited like true language, bee dance and prairie dog warning signals are relatively close enough to merit some contrast. See here: http://www.gorillagestures.info/index.htm that gorillas have only "gestural communication", such as the famous chest pounding, nothing that would let them communicate novel ideas or combine into multiple combinations give variation on the same thought. Chrisrus (talk) 02:59, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Robert Spolsky needs to publish that in a peer reviewed journal for it to have any effect on our coverage. And yes there is a very good reason to contrast human language with that of apes. Namely that humans are apes, and so were our ancestors. But we are the only ones to have developed language. For that reason research into Ape language is relevant and will continue to be conducted, and to be covered in wikipedia articles about the evolution of human language.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·16:36, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Duh, I misread what Chrisrus way saying. Yes, Spolsky needs to publish as we need a strong source to counter "contrary to popular belief". --NeilNtalk to me16:41, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Ah it is Robert Sapolsky, who certainly does publish in peer reviewed journals. But I still have never seen him make the argument that ape language is irrelevant, or produce any evidence against the highly publicized instances of ape signing in print (although many linguists are dubious about them, I dont think anyone have directly claimed that they have evidence that it is false). It is an interesting argument, but not widely accepted. The downplaying of gestural communication is particularly problematic I think, because this is very well documented. And no it is not just chest pounding, but also pointing, and other manual gestures with specific meanings (not sign language, but still gestural communication). User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·16:47, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Because claims about Koko the gorilla and so on using sign language are, at least, not universally accepted, there is no need to contrast human language and ape sign language in the article. Chrisrus (talk) 20:50, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
In fact I would say that it is years ago any linguists or anthropologists considered Savage-Rumbaugh type experiments to be interesting, or enlightening for understanding the evolution of human communication. At most that kind of experience can tell us what Apes are capable of when socialized by humans, but since it clear that no Apes use sign language in the wild, almost all focus in primate communication is currently on gestural and vocal communication - and mostly the first since primate vocal communication is very limited and probably mostly instinctual. I think it is a mistake to think that comparing ape and human language is fruitless. It is the only way we cant achieve an historical understanding of human language which of course evolved from Ape communication, not from prairie dog or bee communication. It is of course an important point that sociality not intelligence is the primary evolutionary pressure on communication. But none of this matters since the article doesnt make any comparison with ape language and doesnt mention Koko or Kanzi or any of the other "signing apes". The only sentence that mentions the difference says simply "human language is unique among apes". I think maybe you thought you were commenting on a different article? The article Language mentions both Kanzi and Koko, as it should given the fact that they are frequently mentioned in the literature.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·21:02, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed your edit since you didnt mention you had removed text. I am however ok with it, as it was clearly an excessive amount of comparison for this article based on a very old source.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·14:31, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Lead sentence again
Perhaps it is the same thing the last person was talking about (sorry, I am no native speaking english person) but I am wondering if it shouldn't be "humans and other great apes" instead of "humans and great apes". It seems to me there are inconsistent information on wikipedia whether homo sapiens is a memeber of the family of great apes:
On the one hand the Hominidae (=Great apes) article characterize homo sapiens as one of seven species in the family of Hominidae; on the other hand there is the Human article which claims that "the homo sapiens ... deverged from the great apes between 5.4 and 6.3 million years ago" which implies that humans are not a part of the great apes.
Some people outside wikipedia argue that humans don't belong to that family because they have (in contrast to (other) great apes) 46 chromosomes. But what does the taxonomy say about that? Zeus37 (talk) 02:47, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The way it's worded at the moment, we imply that humans are great apes without needing the word "other" anymore. Let's keep it in mind in case we need it in case future wordings, though. Chrisrus (talk) 04:38, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
The lead sentence implies that experts do not frequently call others of the Homo genus "humans" as well. This is not true. Experts in fact do often call other homonids of the genus "human" as well.
It should be changed to this:
"Fully modern humans (Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens) are the last of hominids, a branch of primates adapted for bipedal locomotion and manual dexterity which diverged from other great apes between 5.4 and 6.3 million years ago."
This corrects the aforementioned problem and distinguishes what makes hominids different from what makes humans different. It frees the rest of the article to concentrate on the narrow referent, which is what it mostly does. Chrisrus (talk) 05:41, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Whether or not the clarification you've identified needs to happen in the first sentence, I don't know. I do know that the wording you've chosen is awkward and borderline ungrammatical. Ignore the wikilinks and a modifier or two, and look at how it reads: "Modern humans are the last of hominids, a branch of primates adapted for bipedal locomotion and manual dexterity which diverged from other great apes. . . ." There is so much wrong with that sentence that I'm at a loss to find a simple fix. For purposes of comparison, here's the previous wording: "Humans (variously Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens sapiens) are primates of the familyHominidae, and the only extantspecies of the genusHomo." Rivertorch (talk) 16:02, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
...states that the semantic area surrounding the referent of the word "human" is sharply drawn at the species/subspecies level. This is not so. The sources speak of other humans as well. These authors frequently use the word "human" for specimens not labled Homo sapiens (sapiens). While you are right, that sentence is much simpler and easier to parse. However, please notice it does so at the cost of accuracy! As you probably know, other, non H.s.s. humans are also called "humans" in the sources. So the sentence is not precisely true, leading to the recent change.
Please agree that it should be exactly as complicated as it needs to be and no more, and this case is not so simple in terms of common name/taxon overlap. If you can improve the lead without sacrificing precision, please, as always, feel free to edit. But please let us not imply that there is perfect overlap between common name and these taxa in the case of this referent, because there isn't. Chrisrus (talk) 03:42, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
You made a couple of very helpful changes since my previous message, and I made a few additional tweaks just now. It's still a rather long sentence, but I think it reads better now. Honestly, I'm not sure how important it is to base the wording of the lead paragraph on the fact that various Homo sapiens sapiens hominids are also referred to as "human". This article is about present-day humans—or at least it's 98 percent about them—and it seems to me that the lede just needs to make clear what (or do I mean who?) the article is about and then summarize it. Then again, anthropology isn't my strong suit, and I'll take your word for it that the clarification you've made is important. Rivertorch (talk) 07:08, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Rivertorch, if there is variation in terminology used in reliable sources then we should state what terminology we use within this article. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Very well, but is "comprise" the word we want? As I recall, in active voice "The parts compose the whole" and "the whole comprises the parts"; while in passive voice, "The whole is composed of the parts." And "The parts are comprised by the whole." Anyway, the point is, that's not the sort of thing we're going for here because modern humans (H.s./H.s.s.) don't comprise the last of the hominids as the constituent parts, so that word seems mischosen. Let's say "are" instead. Chrisrus (talk) 04:56, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
My sense of it is that the distinction you're making has been very nearly lost, but many traditional grammarians would agree with you (and prescriptive ones no doubt would smack me upside the head). I think "are" sounds a trifle awkward. At the risk of using a ten-dollar word where a ten-cent one might suffice, how about "constitute"? We did already lose my beloved "extant", after all. Rivertorch (talk) 06:54, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
According to [1], the parts constitute the whole in the same way as they compose it. So there's still that problem. I'm sorry we lost "extant", if that word improves it then lets use it, I donno I'd have to see it. Chrisrus (talk) 21:51, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Umm, no. Moot point now, but one definition of "constitute" is: "(of people or things) combine to form a whole" (Oxford American Dictionary). In that way, modern humans collectively form a species. Rivertorch (talk) 06:18, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Let's see:
"Fully modern humans (Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens) comprise the only remaining species of hominid, " (a branch of the great apes that stood up straight")." Do we need this first word?
Modern humans (...) are the only extant hominid, (...
We do not need "fully". It sounds either like advertising copy or Gilbert and Sullivan. And the simple "are" is growing on me, as is "the only remaining". "The last of the hominids" poses a WP:CRYSTAL problem; time will tell, but we can only say with certainty that we're the latest. Rivertorch (talk) 06:18, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't care for the semicolons in the first sentence, but otherwise nothing jumps out at me. Also, this sentence (tagged "citation needed")
The term "human" also designates the collective identity, often applied to superseding concepts of race and creed; e.g. "our" human nature and humanity.
was removed as unsourced. Although poorly written, it's sort of a "sky is blue" statement, verifiable in any dictionary (or in literally thousands of primary sources or just by having a conversation with another human), so I don't think it should have been tagged in the first place. Whether it would enhance the article if rewritten and added back in, I'm not sure. Rivertorch (talk) 16:59, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Hello, I just came back to check on this article after having ignored it for a while. The former lead sentence was long standing and little changed for two years because it was concise, straightforward and easily digestible to the average layman reader. While I don't necessarily disagree with the content itself I feel as though the current first few lead sentences tries to throw too much at the reader at once, and we should find a way to get the first concise lead sentence back in there and make the info more compact and digestible for the average reader again. Cadiomals (talk) 21:50, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi, Cadiomals. I disagree. The old version was very awkward and contained too much extra bits that really didn't belong in the lead. In my opinion, the current version is much shorter and straight to the point, while still mainting WP:NPOV. OriginalEuropean(ᴛᴀʟᴋ)21:56, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Main Image
Wouldn't it be more logical to post a picture in which both individuals are standing straight and properly without carrying anything, preferably with minimum clothing to showcase humans' external anatomy? Furthermore, the women appears aged, overweight, and has sagging breasts. Shouldn't we choose a younger model more representative of the "average" human, for both sexes? Not trying to be shallow, but for this particular article, we have the power to choose from literally billions of photographs. Why this? The way I look at it is that we post an image which we would be willing to send to an extraterrestrial civilization to show them how human beings look like. JDiala (talk) 19:46, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
You may not be "trying to be shallow", but you certainly come across that way. The individuals concerned look reasonable enough as a representation of 'typical' humans - and I very much doubt that an extraterrestrial civilisation would be over-concerned about whether the female in question conformed to a particular idealised cultural stereotype. Not that Wikipedia is written for extraterrestrials anyway. As for 'anatomy', I suggest that you look at the image further down the page. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:01, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
If you have another picture you think might be better, please do propose it. This one was chosen because it seems to depict the most common variety of the species, looking very average and typical. So Asian peasants. I think nowadays, however, the average person is no longer a peasant but now a factory worker. I don't think, however, that even if extant factory workers outnumber peasants, that they as yet outnumber all peasants who have ever lived. Anyway, the point is to show extremely typical, ordinary humans, not idealized ones. The woman in the anatomy section is more to most people would have us look like rather than do look like. In the lead picture, her breasts indicate that she's probably nursed infants, which is sort of a point we are making, that's what women's beasts do look like typically most of the time. The anatomy section female specimen's breasts are more aesthetic. Chrisrus (talk) 20:45, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
They are standing up straight, I don't see how not carrying anything is preferable, most modern humans are not naked so depicting humans naked is not representative of our species, the woman doesn't need to have perky breasts, it wouldn't be any more representative of our species. Like someone else said, you come off as shallow, your criteria for what the humans should look like is based upon your own personal biases, not what's best for this article. ScienceApe (talk) 05:32, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
Can we please reopen the discussion about the main image? The image should depict a pair of exemplary humans, not two barefooted slaves from Southeast Asia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.79.58.5 (talk) 01:15, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
well, we have a fresh edit and change of main image by an IP editor, so I guess we can consider the discussion re-opened, I hope it doesn't get insta-reverted just for reverting's sake, and give it my support as it shows the reproductive prime of a human family and seems to have a aesthetic effect that has some appeal... Roberticus (talk) 02:17, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
What I don't understand is this: if you go to the dedicated page for any given race (Jews, Serbs, Persians, Germans, Chinese, etc.) the main image is a panel of the most exemplary individuals among that group. They do not display what would be considered 'a typical ____'. So why is the policy any different for the page dedicated to Humans in general? Why can we not have similar panel, including members from many prominent races? Or one especially distinguished individual of each sex? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.79.58.5 (talk) 04:01, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
"Exemplary individuals" is a phrase devoid of objective meaning. "Aesthetic effect" and "has some appeal" are clearly subjective. "Barefooted slaves from Southeast Asia" is clearly pejorative, "reproductive prime" irrelevant. I would have reverted, too, if I'd been online and seen it. Rivertorch (talk) 06:13, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Both suit the purpose quite well, and either would make a fine lead photo for the article:
Both are naturalist. As opposed to depictions one sees often on TV or in the movies, both photos quite frankly and realistically show average humans of average attractiveness. Neither photographer seems to have employed a hair stylist or make-up artist to get a certain effect. Neither shows people with particularly good looks, excellent health, good physical condition, like the pair in the anatomy section photo.
Both photos show poor farmers or peasants, what the vast majority of people on earth have historically been, and in many if not most places still are! (However, as stated above, we are under the impression that, nowadays, the average person is now a factory worker, not a farmer or peasant anymore. As we are comparing just these two photos, however, neither addresses that issue, so let's set that aside, but remember to bring it up again in future main image discussions.)
The proposed photo is better than the established photo in some important ways:
It portrays children, who are a large percentage of humans. There are no children in the established photo. (Note, however, that neither photo shows elderly people. Humans are distinguished by the fact that a significant percentage of us are much older and frailer than is normal among animals.)
Although the established photo depicts a couple, seemingly married, as is usual for the species, it does not show a family. The proposed photo clearly depicts a family, a man, wife, and their offspring, together. This is very good; a significant improvement over the established photo. The nuclear family, experts say, living under one roof, is the usual way of life for humans.
The background is clearly the family's home. This is an important point: humans are among the animals which build and live within shelters they construct. In the established photo, the people are outside, and there are no buildings to be seen at all. For future reference, please note that an ideal photo would probably acknowledge the normal human environment includes buildings.
The established photo is better than the proposed photo in some important ways:
The established photo shows the great effect humans have on the environment. This is an excellent point! People have always worked the land and altered it in that way, with the steepest slopes relatively unchanged and the flatter areas set out in rectangles and access paths and trails and roads everywhere. The proposed photo does not make this point at all.
The photo is of superior aesthetic quality. It appears to have been made with superior equipment. The light is much better, and the way the background frames the foreground is excellent. The proposed photo is pretty good in terms of equipment, composition, and so on, but it's not as good.
The photo the particular variety of human depicted, H.s. var. "Europæus albus", if you will, although numerous and quite widespread, is not the most common. Most human beings do not exhibit this coloration and skull structure. H.s. var. "Asiaticus fuscus" is more representative of the species as a whole. This is the variety shown in the established photo.
Both are fine lead photos for this article. I am not sure which is best for the article, but I thank the editor for his bold attempt to improve this article. I hope the efforts continue and even better photos will be found. Until then, I could support either as the main article image. Chrisrus (talk) 08:43, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
I generally agree with you Chrisrus in that there are points for an against each photo. This discussion does expose one of the main weaknesses of WP though, which is that it is likely to go on for ever. Clothed vs naked, continent vs continent, collage vs single and so on. To some degree we might be able to improve the selection process by trying to agree on a set of selection criteria. What do you think? Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:53, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
I oppose the suggestion of changing the photo. The established photo represents contemporary times, and is phenotypically about average. The proposed photo is a much pooerer illustration, with bad lighting showing only partial anatomy and having the unfortunate effect of supporting the widespread systemic bias of taking mid 20th century white Americans to be the implicit prototype of humans. The idea that is is better to show them in their home I consider irrelevant, as is the inclusion of children who are depicted in the body of the article.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·
Hi, I would like to listen your opinion about these images, what do you think to use one of them in the article instead of the one of the two humans from Southern Asia? -- Nick.mon (talk) 20:26, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Honestly, neither of them seem appropriate. I would like to see a different image as well, but I believe it should be an image of a male and female from a tribal society, meaning more "original", unlike a modern type of family. I'm not really sure how to explain it. OriginalEuropean(ᴛᴀʟᴋ)00:24, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
These are fine photos and could serve the purpose well. They seem less representative of the species as a whole than Asian peasants. Most people are Asian, and most people are farmers. Maybe today they are factory workers. These people seem African and European, two common but still not as common varieties of this species as Asians. Also, these pictures show no work being done or the effect on the environment that humans have, no indication how they fit into the society. They seem staged, artificial, and idealized instead of naturalistic, "in their natural element" as it were. They are looking their best instead of their ordinary ways. They do show children, however, something the established photo does not. Chrisrus (talk) 00:34, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
"These people seem African and European, two common but still not as common varieties of this species as Asians", what does that mean? Asian is not a "race", as there are Arabs, Turks, Indians, and Mongols native to Asia, amongst others. And I fail to see how the second image of a mixed-race family represents "African", as there are Berber, Bantu, Khoisan, etc., native to Africa. I do not think the staged images of a white and mixed family from the United States of America represent Humans as a whole very well. If anything, there should be a collage of images of different ethnic groups, but even like that it would be difficult for an agreement as to which ethnic groups would make the cut. OriginalEuropean(ᴛᴀʟᴋ)00:55, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Let's not use the word "race". In articles about species, we use the most common variety in the lead photo. Say for example the article Canis lupus. It has a photos of black and white wolves. But the lead photo wolf is gray, of course, because that's the most common. This is never an issue at other articles. It's the obvious thing to do. To do a collage of a group of a representative varieties is an interesting idea, but it would be an exceptional lead photo for a species article because we normally don't normally do collages at the species level. We normally do them at at least the genus level, and as you move up to higher taxa like family, class, phylum, and so on, it gets to the point where collages become increasingly common, then normal, and finally universal. Chrisrus (talk) 04:50, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
The pic on the left is pretty poor, quality wise. The pic on the right looks okay and I don't have current objections against using it. --NeilNtalk to me03:45, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Would that include humans who aren't obsessed with dividing us all up into arbitrary categories, and then arguing over which ones we should illustrate? AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:58, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Maybe we're approaching this backwards: seeking a solution instead of first verifying that there's a problem. Since no single image is going to satisfy everyone, we might do well to consider whether the current image, which was carefully chosen and has been in place for a long time, has any major drawbacks. If it doesn't, then it seems rather pointless to consider the pros and cons of alternatives. Unless I've missed something, all of the complaints about the current image—except for the ones in the vein of "I like x image better"—have involved fallacious, often offensive, objections based on the subjects' race, ethnicity, economic status, physical attributes, or other irrelevant factors. In the absence of consensus that the current image needs to go, I propose we forgo recurrent discussions about a replacement. Rivertorch (talk) 08:01, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
The current image is longstanding by several years for a reason. It is an adequate, neutral, non-controversial depiction. Though alternatives have been proposed on occasion there has never been a good reason at all to change it, and that's that. Anything as longstanding as this should not be replaced without vast consensus. Cadiomals (talk) 09:44, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
I would like to say that I am not against the current image, it is a very good photo. I am just saying that wrote in the article about the technology of humans and development of science and then use an image of two farmers from a not developed country is not properly correct. I repeat I am not saying that the current image is bad, it is very beautiful, but I think there are images that can represent better the technology or the development of human civilization. I know that most of humans are farmers, and that Asian people are more numerous than Europeans or Africans, but, according to me, one of the two images that I have proposed, could represent better human society. Maybe you can say that they represent better "Western society", well, I know, maybe you are right, but I think they are more appropriate. Anyway this is only my personal opinion. Thanks. -- Nick.mon (talk) 11:22, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Nick.mon, the article isn't about "technology of humans" or "development of science", nor is it about "human society"; it's about human beings. If you consider the entire timeline of H. sapiens' existence on the planet, even farming is a relatively new thing, at least in any kind of organized form. Consider: hunter-gatherers have long been the exception, while briefcase-toting, iPad-wielding, DNA-sequencing, Tesla-driving people who couldn't grow so much as a radish if their life depended on it still don't represent the majority (and even if they did, it would be a very new phenomenon). In the light of that, farmers seem like a reasonable compromise and a good choice. Rivertorch (talk) 18:40, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
"Of these, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, and Homo heidelbergensis are considered to be the most likely immediate ancestor of modern humans.[5][6]" --- The most likely immediate ancestor, singular? Or the most likely immediate ancestors, plural (taken together)? Or is it that our most immediate ancestor was most likely one of these three species, but we do not know which species of the three? This should be clarified. Lhimec (talk) 20:31, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Basically I'm asking if it should say ". . . are considered to be the most likely immediate ancestors . . ." plural ("ancestors"), or if it should be altered somehow to match the number of the noun "ancestor" with the fact that three species are listed. Lhimec (talk) 20:33, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
So, are you going to place the subspecies, or is that a fear driven phenomenon, where you fear phacisms (myth spelling is correct). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.204.18.169 (talk) 15:47, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand you, but experts have not spoken of the branches of this species as "subspecies" in quite some time. Chrisrus (talk) 17:57, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
"Modern humans (Homo sapiens) are the only remaining species of the hominids, a branch of social great apes characterized by erect posture and bipedal locomotion; manual dexterity and tool use; and a general trend toward larger and more complex brains.[2][3]"
I think the word "social" is misleading. The current wording means that hominids are a branch of social great apes. But I am unaware of any classification of great apes into "social great apes" and "non-social great apes." If the point is to convey that hominids (Homo sapiens and others) are all social (which would require evidence), the word "social" ought to be put somewhere else in the sentence that makes this clear. Otherwise I think the word "social" can be cut altogether, since it modifies the phrase "great apes" in a way that implies that hominids are a sub-group of the "social great apes," which would be presumably a sub-group of "great apes" -- something for which I could find no evidence on the page for "great apes" on Wikipedia. Lhimec (talk) 20:53, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Ive removed the word and added sociality as a characteristic trait which is more correct. I have also reverted some of your changes that changed wordings to something more general but less accurate.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·21:03, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
There are social great apes and non-social ones. Humans are among the social ones. "Man is a social animal", said Socrates, and everyone else. Chrisrus (talk) 00:45, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, Orangutans are not considered a very social ape. But nonetheless Lhimec was right that there is no official cçsubclassification of great apes into social and non-social ones. We might as well say "naked" or any other adjective that has been used to classify humans as opposed to other apes. Given that humans are by far the most social of all primates, it makes more sense to list sociality as one of the specific traits that set us apart from our primate cousins.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·16:28, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
While Aristotle may have been the first to define man as a social animal, reason dictates that others have noticed it even before that. It's been said many times since then and many experts seem to feel that it's important to define humans as a social animal in an upfront and primary way. So even though there is obviously no taxon or somesuch for "social animal", it definitively is common practice to define humans as a social animal in a primary way. It's a big part of the definition of "human being" and so it wouldn't be good to remove the idea from the lead and neglect to mention that we are social animals right up front because it's such a big part of what a human being is. Chrisrus (talk) 17:53, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
I think that is premature, given that noone has supported your viewpoint. The fact that we are social are not removed from the lead, it is just moved to another place where it fits better because it doesnt suggest the existence of a basic classification of apes into social and non-social ones.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·20:38, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
You are right. I am sorry, I didn't notice the word "sociality" there. I apologize for the oversight.
Nevertheless, I still plan to change it back because that phrase is only for things that make homonids different from Great apes, and sociality is not one of these things. There are other social great apes, but none that stand and walk about on two legs and touch pinky and thumb and whatnot. That part is only for saying what a homonid is, so I'm moving it back. Chrisrus (talk) 00:24, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes, sociality is one of the things that make humans different from other apes. Just as with technology and bipedalism other apes also have it, but to a much lesser degree.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·00:26, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
No, I meant to say that section is for those things that distinguish the homonids from the other great apes. Homonids are not more social than chimps and such. See what I'm saying? A hominid is a great ape that is built to stand up and walk about on two legs instead of swinging under branches and knuckle walking. And the finger to thumb ratio and so on makes an ape a hominid. Not being social. Being social doesn't make hominids different from hhimps and such. Humans are one of the social apes, hominids are apes that have certain bone length ratio indicating they walked and such instead of moving about as an ape would. That fact that they can stand and "walk", badly, that's not the point. They don't have the bones for it. Chrisrus (talk) 02:47, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes, Humans are much more social than both chimps, bonobos and gorillas. Evidence: We have language. We have the cities. We have the facebook. I dont think any one would argue that humans are not the most highly social of all social primates.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·01:25, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes, we don't know that all hominids are more social than, say, chimps. Some hominids may have been less social. What makes a hominid a hominid and not just a great ape are things like the angle of the toe on the foot, that's all. So I'm going to change it back. Chrisrus (talk) 17:32, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
And I am going to change it back again. We are listing characteristics, not definitions here. Sociality is characteristic of hominids. We also list tool use for example. Other apes, use tools too, just not as much as hominids do.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·02:39, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
We are talking about a wide group of creatures whose sociality might have differed greatly. Let's be careful to ground each fact about their behavior with the evidence. Bones such as toes, knees, prove locomotion was different. Hands and stone tools prove dexterity and tool use were different. What proves they all more social than, say, bonobos or chimps, who are also very social and live in sometimes very large troops? The robust australopithecines' skulls show they ate meat less than others, maybe even less than chimps, so wouldn't have needed as the coordination of a pack predator. Were their troop sizes larger or more coordinated than those of chimps? How sure are we? Chrisrus (talk) 05:15, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Structure of variation
Should Lewontin's Fallacy be mentioned in this section? Furthermore, the Race and health and Race and genetics articles clearly demonstrate certain ethnic groups have variation in disease occurrence and that there is a medium-correlation between individuals of the same self-identified race and genetic cluster similarities, suggesting a genetic basis to the concept of race. The section seems awfully PC and meant to promote the leftist, ultra-egalitarian hypothesis that race is a "social construct". JDiala (talk) 06:56, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
I dont think I am a particularly big deal around here except in the minds of a couple of folks who think I am the wikipedia wing of a worldwide conspiracy of jews and communists. I am however, one of a handful of editors who are actually familiar with the literature on race and genetic variation as it in presented in other sources than right wing blogs and hate sites. This is a short summary of the structure of human variation and it follows quite closely the way that it is presented in physical anthropology textbooks - as it should. There is no reason to mention the socalled "lewontins fallacy" because we don't mention the argument that argument by Lewontin that Edwards considered to be fallacious. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·13:49, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
WP:NPOV? Textbooks aren't necessarily always neutral, especially considering the liberal bias in academia. Mentioning both sides of the argument, even if just a sentence, is probably the right thing to do, even for touchy subjects like this. JDiala (talk) 21:39, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Liberal bias in Academia? You mean the jewish conspiracy? In a wikipedia context texbooks and peer reviewed studies determine what is NPOV on any particular issue and which views require which degree of representation. Mentioning Edwards argument is neither necessary or relevant since we dont mention the argument by lewontin that he critiques.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·22:08, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Lewontin's argument is, put simply, "more variation within racial groups than between; therefore, racial groups are not objectively defined". That is more or less mentioned, and Edward refutes that argument. I'm not saying you have to take sides; you could mention the existence of fringe scientific groups and then just add that "these beliefs are not shared by the rest of the scientific community". For example, the 9/11 page mentions conspiracy theories; that doesn't mean these conspiracy theories are supported by reliable sources, but at the very least it is acknowledged that a certain minority group of scientists hold this particular viewpoint.JDiala (talk) 06:28, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
No, the article only mentions the "more variation within groups than between" which is a well established fact that Edwards does not contradict, the article does not mention Lewontins argument about the taxonomic insignificance of race which is what Edwards refuted. The fact that cluster analysis approaches to race exists is already mentioned in the article.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·06:36, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
The same fact is true of the variation among humans and chimps (and humans and bananas IIRC). Maybe you could add that to demonstrate that it's an irrelevant fact. Unless you are trying to mislead people. 211.171.155.12 (talk) 07:02, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
You may find the fact irrelevant but authors of textbooks in physical anthropology and human genetic variation dont think so but rather consistently mention it. That is why it is mentioned in the article.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·17:58, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
We don't do Fair and Balanced (tm) around here. We follow sources. And yeah, we don't even mention Lewontin, so why would we mention a critique of it? Dbrodbeck (talk) 22:28, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
What 'argument' is that? The article says nothing about Lewontin. Not least because the Lewontin-Edwards debate is old hat, and no longer seen as relevant by anyone but the same old crowd of right-wing bloggers that latched on to a catchy title for a paper and like to pretend it is some sort of fundamental principle of something-or-other. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:57, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
The article includes Lewontin's argument almost word for word ("Of the 0.1% of human genetic differentiation, 85% exists within any randomly chosen local population). I haven't seen a published rebuttal of it Edward's paper yet either, so it's not just "right wing bloggers". JDiala (talk) 06:28, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
Skipping the politics and personal bias, there is improvement that could be done on describing the sub-branches of this referent on the tree of life. This subspecies is objectively sub-divided into different lineages, the larger branches of which share clear anatomical differences. Experts in this field include forensic pathologists, who can identify the paticular branch on the human family tree that a specimin belongs sometimes based on very little evidence, maybe just a tooth. Such differences, if they were characteristic of any other animal, would classify them for their own taxons, but this has not been done among these sources for a very long time. Referring to these branches as "races" is problematic. The word they use today seems to be "ancestry", which is objectively true and without political baggage. Chrisrus (talk) 04:42, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes, that unfortunately betrayus a complete misunderstanding of both how genetic variation is structured and what forensic anthropologists specialize in doing and how they do it. Human genetic variation is not structured into well defined lineages and noone claims it is, and there are no "branches" with clear anatomical differences - variation is clinal and clines do not follow eachother but the "lineage" of every cline is independent and that is why only cluster analysis can create branch structures. Forensic anthropologists can identify certain anatomical features that correlate to certain degrees with continental ancestry. They can not however identify any branch structure in population. The reason forensic anthropologists identify "race" is because that is what law enforcement procedures requires them to do in order to identify remains. But what they do is to extrapolate from anatomical features to living phenotype and further one to racial classification. That is not the same as identifying ancestry. It simply means that you can estimate what a person looked like based on their skeletons and then use that knowledge to make a guess about how they would have been classified racially when they were alive. Your claim about differences being classified as taxons for any other animal is contradicted by virtually dozens of experts and by the fact that the human species has much lower internal genetic diversity than mono taxemic species such as the Chimpanzee. The only account on which you are not mistaken is that ancestry is a much better way to describe human biological variation, although you are still wrong to think that it is simply another more politically correct word for "race". That is not the way it is used by people who actually study genetic variation.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·05:36, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
Variation is in fact largely non-clinal through continental barriers, and selected genes tend to covary rather than vary independently.(Coop 2009) Whether some monotaxemic species have more genetic diversity is utterly irrelevant to the fact that human genetic variation clusters sigificantly due to shared ancestry (which obviously isn't entirely monophyletic). We call those clusters races and a small child can see them with their own eyes. 211.171.155.12 (talk) 06:00, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
I am guessing that by Coop you mean "Graham Coop et al."? Although of the four articles he and his lab published in 2009 I cant find any that would support your claim about variation being non clinal over continental barriers. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·06:12, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps you mean "Signals of recent positive selection in a worldwide sample of human populations" in which the authors write "We refine the geographic distributions of known selective sweeps, and find extensive overlap between these distributions for populations in the same continental region but limited overlap between populations outside these groupings". This is obviously talking about something rather different from what we were discussing since it only analyses for selective sweeps, which can of course be considered to be likely to be limited to specific geographical areas, but which accounts for an extremely small amount of the total variation.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·06:15, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
Junk DNA obviously is relevant for establishing lineages and ancestry clusters yes, in fact most cluster analysis is based on noncoding DNA haplotypes, and secondly not all coding DNA shows signals of selective sweeps, in fact as the article shows most coding DNA does not.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·06:40, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
What specific changes to the article are being proposed here? Unless specific changes are being proposed, why are we talking about this here? Chrisrus (talk) 07:26, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
A specific question asked was, 'Should Lewontin's Fallacy be mentioned in this section?'. I agree with Andy here in saying 'No'. I had not heard of it before but the term is clearly designed to mislead the reader into thinking it is some kind of logical paradox when in fact it is just referring to the fact that two people disagree about something. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:01, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I also see no clear way to integrate a link to that article from this one into that section. However, I would recommend everyone read it anyway, because it may be important to know. Chrisrus (talk) 17:42, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
In fact the section is carefully crafted to avoid the discussion of race by only presenting the facts that are generally agreed upon in the mainstream literature. Entering into the polemics of cluster analysis and race is far beyond the scope of this article. If anyone can point out a specific statement in the article that they consider not to be a mainstream view, then that will be the basis for another discussion, but this current one has no basis at all.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·17:53, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Replace male with a bigger penis
trolling
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
1. His penis is too small to see and therefore need to be replaced by a male with a bigger one.
2. Is also raise suspicions if this picture was racially motivated. It's easy enough that a kid can tell stereotype asian dude with small penis. Why not pose some Asian dude with micro penis? why not Keni styles with 7 inches or at least isn't that small? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.36.173 (talk • contribs) 21:59, 13 March 2014
Basic anatomical features of female and male humans. These models have had body hair and male facial hair removed and head hair trimmed.
BLAH BLAH BLAH it's like talking to brick of walls with no reasoning skills. It's fine for people like you but not for many others. If you have any damn commonsense you would see why that picture have so many failed reasons to post it on wiki. This picture was already being questioned in tumblr for being racially motivated to stereotype on Asian men. So please enough with the dumb and fakes excuses. 92.236.36.173 (talk) 21:50, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
Excuse me but Maunus's sources above categorically state that variation is not correlated so it is not possible for Asians to have small penises, nor is it possible for anybody to look Asian, and it is illogical to use the word "Asian" to refer to anybody. We are all equal. Please check your privilege. Thanks. 118.219.86.71 (talk) 07:34, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
The way it reads now, it seems to imply that fire was the exclusive tool of this species but that's not true. According to Wikipedia, other species of our kind also had fire. Chrisrus (talk) 00:03, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
More like total ambiguity. I thought we had consensus on the wording for the lead paragraph, but it would appear that the "last" wording has crept back in (along with two inappropriate semicolons and an extraneous space). I believe this version's wording is unambiguous, although it suffers from the same punctuation challenges as the current wording. Rivertorch (talk) 19:10, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
Where is the ambiguity? The word "hominid" is linked and immediately followed by a defining apositive. If you mean that it's not clear whether modern humans are a species or a subspecies, that is because it is not clear from these sources whether humans are a species or subspecies. Please don't edit it so that it states that we are unambiguously a species and not a subspecies, because the truth is, it's not clear if modern humans are a species or subspecies. Chrisrus (talk) 19:32, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
The word last has various meanings. It's being used here to mean "[the] only remaining", but it also means (among other things) "final", "lowest in importance or rank", and "immediately preceding". This ambiguity was addressed, albeit somewhat obliquely, last month in the thread entitled "Lead" (see Archive 34). "The only extant species" wording, which was in place for a long time, avoids such ambiguities. So does "the only remaining species", which was the way it read more recently. If we must avoid using the word "species" in the sentence—and I confess I'm still a bit fuzzy on why we must avoid it—we could say "the only extant hominids" or "the only remaining hominids", thus avoiding the ambiguous word "last". Rivertorch (talk) 13:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't see much ambiguity about the word "last" given the context, but if replacing it increases precision or clarity, we should do so. The ambiguity about whether we're a species or a subspecies should be preserved because it is found in the sources. Chrisrus (talk) 17:40, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
My background isn't in science, let alone anthropology, but isn't it possible that present-day humans are both a species and a subspecies? More to the point, does saying we're a species imply that we're precluded from being a subspecies as well? I don't get that at all, but that isn't my point. My point is that the ambiguity is unmistakable: as currently written, the word last can be read as meaning more than one thing. Among fluent speakers of English it's unlikely to be misconstrued, but good writing involves certainty, not likelihood, wherever possible. Besides, our audience is broader than that. Rivertorch (talk) 20:08, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
Just to clarify, the concern is that the reader might take "last" to mean that we are asserting that there will never be another? Chrisrus (talk) 22:28, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
Well, and hominid can mean both Hominini and the whole family Hominidae (compare felid and Felidae). And I think I use the latter meaning more often. Sky6t (talk) 17:13, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Humans are ....
Humans, it is agreed, are a branch of hominds, which are a branch of the great apes which are a branch of the primates and mammals and so on. The trick is to write out in sentence form something that is better depicted graphically. It's a strange sentence to write, "a branch of a branch of a branch".
This one, already in the article, shows how humans are related to non-human apes:
The Tree of Apes
War and trade
Why do the war and trade sections offer definitions of war and trade and deliberately distance itself from mentioning that humans fight wars. It's more of a commentary on them rather than a comment on the characteristics of a part of human culture. The question shouldn't be "what is war?" or "why does war exist?" it should be "define war as a part of human culture". The same goes for trade. 117.213.1.222 (talk) 21:27, 20 April 2014 (UTC)answer
Former Featured Article
This article is extremely important. Here's a thread for collaborators so we can get it featured (or at least good).
First and foremost, what do you think can be improved?
Humans, unite! monochrome_monitor20:10, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
I've been paying attention to this article for a few years now and it's no good. At most this is a bias roundup of other articles. Those articles are fine, but there is nothing of objective value here. Every section is just a poorly written summary of a better main article. Why is a conservative status included? How is that in any way professional? It's funny, a joke at most.
I think we should seriously consider getting rid of this article and replacing it with the disambiguation list linking to all the other main articles. What is the value of having an article like this? It's jsut a bunch of partial facts sprinkled with the occasional egotism.
This article is poorly realized and suffers from intrinsic bias. I think the only way to avoid this is to write from the perspective of an intelligent being, not being human, or just get rid of it totally. Llehsadam (talk) 10:43, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
If it's not obvious then we should start with getting rid of the conservation status. It's argumentum ab auctoritate coming from the IUCN and doesn't actually contribute to anything. It takes away from the article.. well, that's not entirely true. It does add irony if we're lucky. Llehsadam (talk) 20:28, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
If someone is looking for Humans as a species, a much better article can be found under Homo sapiens sapiens and if they are looking for any other aspect of humans, they should be redirected to one of the many "see also" links listed here. If someone is looking for the human condition, then they go to the Human condition. This article is just a haphazard collection of interesting tidbits from all the other articles, organized in some arbitrary fashion that tries to define humans as an animal with taxonomy used for animals created in a time we didn't consider ourselves animals. Doesn't anyone realize how ridiculous that is? Llehsadam (talk) 20:54, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
Wow, thanks for the link. General overview article? It's more like a bad duplicate that tries too hard. If you want to examine the human as an animal go to Homo sapiens sapiens, if you want to know more about the "human aspect" then go to those pages. This article starts by catagorizing humans (rightfully) as animals but then goes on to describe them in ways that would put any taxonomist to shame. The way this article is going, it'll soon have to have a section about space travel, a list of famous humans, more pictures because these hardly showcase the taxon, corporations, expanded sections about language, and some anecdote to global warming. Llehsadam (talk) 21:29, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
You are aware the article is here to help people find the topics you are referring as all may not be aware of the terms. A grade 7 student may not be aware of what is what ...thus this article is here to help direct people to the main topics on humans. What do you think we can do to fix the article since it will never be deleted as its the norm as see at human being -- Encyclopedia Britannica. -- Moxy (talk) 21:38, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
This article exists for those lesser members of the human race whose sadly inadequate literary skills and knowledge don't enable them to instantly comprehend wording like "argumentum ab auctoritate coming from the IUCN". That includes me. HiLo48 (talk) 22:25, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
Good to know I was not the only one that had to look up a few terms LOL - To quote a help page - that I think is a applicable to talk pages as-well "Although you should use a broad vocabulary, do not provide such a quantity of locutions as to impel those who aspire to derive serviceable information from the article to consult a dictionary or thesaurus" . -- Moxy (talk) 22:39, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
That's okay, but it should still be gone. The IUCN had to give humans a conservation status because we are living things and they try to rate everything, but that alone does not make the information about the conservation status of humans at all important. Why is this information relevant at all? I understand why it's there for the common chimpanzee or even the Eastern gray squirrel and the authors of those articles understand that as well by actually explaining why the species are where they are on the conservation list. If this article is going to offer the little bar, the reasoning behind the status (as provided by the IUCN) should also be provided somewhere. But you know, in the case of humans, things like global warming, wars, and famine could be considered when writing up our own conservation status but that's not the job of the IUCN. They do not concern themselves with humans, they concern themselves with living things in danger because of humans and only included humans on the list to make a point that we are animals too. Their rating however, can be ignored because it is of something their criteria were never designed to rate. Llehsadam (talk) 07:13, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
A 7th grader may get the wrong idea when only seeing the conservation status of humans as what the IUCN decided. They may believe this to be a dismissal of all danger that we made for ourselves. If you notice, the Britannica article you linked to is short, written in a professional tone and does not include a conservation status. For more information it links to Homo sapiens which is the equivalent to Wikipedia's Homo sapiens sapiens.Llehsadam (talk) 07:27, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
First of all, the conservation status is not prominent to the reader. It's just a footnote, so I don't see what it has to do with whether this article should exist, so this conversation is off-topic and so probably this thread should be split off under a different heading.
Second, the issue of the conservation status has been discussed before. The argument against it was as I recall that having it makes the article looks silly because it's strange to assign a conservation status to this species for various reasons including the fact that assigning a conservation status to this species strains the definition of the word "conservation", which is a philosophy that protecting non-humans species, not humans.
The reason we kept it as I recall included the fact that we always include conservation status for every species that has been assessed and so we'd have to have a very good reason to violate such long-standing practice. Also, it was denied that everyone already knows that experts have assessed this species and assigned it a conservation status, or that including this information in the article does not benefit the reader. The meaning of including the conservation statue is experts looked in the matter of the long term survival of this species and given it a thumbs up, so anyone who might think that we are digging our own graves through pollution and global warming and ozone depletion and pesticide use and nuclear power on and on that some people do seem to believe that there is reason to worry but actually we've been assessed by experts and there's nothing to worry about in terms of us going on and on into the future. It's nice to know for the reader.
It's in the sources; it's what sources say, so we say the same. We have indeed been assessed this conservation status. Ours is to report, so unless it's very clear that few or any of the readers would benefit from learning that our species has been assessed and given a clean bill of health would not benefit from including this information in such a non-intrusive way, why remove it.
Finally, in conclusion from looking at these for a pattern in these threads about the conservation status, this is how it seemed to me. It tends to be resorted to by users who don't believe in the existence of this article, and are casting about for criticisms that could justify its destruction. If it seems best to remove the conservation status, I can understand that, see it from their point of view. It has nothing to do, however, with the very existence of this article, and so bringing it in that context weakens pro-deletion arguments instead of strengthening them. Chrisrus (talk) 19:14, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
You are right. I apologize for seeming to imply that all opposition to including the conservation was so motivated. Martin just thought it detracted from the quality of the article. Chrisrus (talk) 04:48, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
The article is meant to answer the question "what is a human?" not "what are the taxonomical origins of a human?". Space travel doesn't define what a human is. It is one of their achievements. Humans are more than just a taxonomical definition of homo sapiens sapiens. The article aims to answer the question of what a human is just like an article on any animal (like gorillas) do. 117.213.1.222 (talk) 22:01, 20 April 2014 (UTC)answer
I think we should take the "Unique" in this sentence and replace it with something more fitting, since there's a Gorilla who can talk with Sign Language, and understand just about 2,000 words.
"While many species communicate, language is unique to humans, a defining feature of humanity, and a cultural universal."
Even if Koko were using language which I think there is a very broad consensus that she isnøt then language would still be unique to humans, cause no non-humans have learned it except through deliberate effort by humans to teach it to them. No Non-humans develop langauge naturally.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·17:46, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Talking of language, this argument seems to something of a semantic one to me. If we define 'language' as the form of communication used by humans (which is a fairly nautural definition) then it would seem that no other animals use language because all other animals communicate by means that are significantly different, in several fundamental ways, from the way that humans communicate when using language.
On the other hand, we have extended the meaning of the word 'language from its root meaning of 'spoken communication' to include other forms of communication, such as sign language. It could be argued that the meaning of the word word could be extended further to include some forms of non-human animal communication.
Regarding the article, why do we not just stick to the facts? Humans use forms of communication that are vastly more complex that those used by any other animal. What exactly we choose to define as language is another matter. Martin Hogbin (talk) 08:17, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Human sign language is the same as human spoken language for this purpose. There is no discussion on this. The question is whether animal communication can reach the complexity of human language, spoken, signed or written - and there is a general consensus that they can't. There his however an unfortunate tendency among layfolk to think that if animals can reproduce any sign from a human communication system then they are using language which is of course silly, since then a tape recorder would also be able to do it. The article as it is faithfully reflect the mainstream literature and there is no reason to change it.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·14:54, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
You're right, whenever we link to language, we say that it means a specifically human system of communication. I'd just thought it might be helpful to stop and think about why that is: as far as we know, only humans have true language, but that's not why other forms of communication are not language. There might be other species that have (a modality-independent cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex grammar rules to produce utterances combining semiosic items to relate signs with particular meanings via productivity, recursivity, and displacement), and so on. In fact, there are precedents in other species for language-like communication systems among certain social animals: prairie dog, honeybees. Furthermore, reason seems to dictate that, given the amount of "goldilocks zone" planets that there seem to be, and the time scales of the universe, that language must have evolved elsewhere somewhere somewhen. At least that can't be rationally ruled out: just because aliens aren't human doesn't mean they can't have language. So language is not really defined by it being a human trait; it's in part the other way around: language is part of what it means to be human. Chrisrus (talk) 17:13, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
You're right, whenever we link to language, we say that it means a specifically human system of communication. I'd just thought it might be helpful to stop and think about why that is: as far as we know, only humans have true language, but that's not why other forms of communication are not language. There might be other species that have (a modality-independent cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex rules to produce utterances combining semiosic items to relate signs with particular meanings via productivity, recursivity, and displacement, and so on). In fact, there are precedents in other species for language-like communication systems among certain social animals: prairie dog, honeybees. In fact, reason seems to dictate that, given the amount of "goldilocks zone" planets that there seem to be, and the time scales of the universe, that language must have evolved elsewhere somewhere somewhen. But even if not, language is not really defined by this species. It's defined by a huge qualitative difference between it and other communication systems found among people and other animals. Chrisrus (talk) 15:16, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I did not express myself very well. The dictionary definition of the word language varies from the strict interpretation of 'human speech', which clealy is limitd to humans, to the much broader interpretation of 'sound snd signals used by animals to communicate', which clearly is not limited to humans. To say that language is unique to humans is therefore meaningless. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:49, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, there is a problem with the use of the word "language". People often mean specifically language but the also often language. That's why the article uses the wording "While many animals communicate, only humans have language." That improvement to the article resulted from this same discussion some time ago. It should be clear now which definition of "language" we are using, so thanks are in order to everyone who had already talked about this problem of two definitions of "language" here several times before and got that part of the article fixed already, we thought. But go ahead, and let's look at improving that even further. If I see something I can do to make it even clearer I'll leave an edit summary link to this thread. I invite any readers to do the same. Chrisrus (talk) 18:21, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I think that if we want to say something meaninful we should use some of the terms used by Patterson in the video about human language. Martin Hogbin (talk) 22:15, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
It woud be highly problematic to change the current wording based on editor's own musings and dictionary definitions or a video by Patterson without first reviewing the literature about language, and the differences between animal communication and language.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·00:13, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
The first paragraph says that early hominids had more apelike brains and skulls, what is apelike, modern human skulls are also apelike, because they are also apes. 202.123.130.53 (talk) 12:25, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
This edit request to Human has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
Change the conservation status of humans. In the definition section of the conservation status Wikipedia dictates we have no concerns about ourselves on the wild. We don't live in the wild. The only things keeping us in the wild are camping, hunting and some people who live away from modern times. We are almost extinct in the wild.
71.98.201.3 (talk) 21:08, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
The section says nothing about 'in the wild'. Though frankly I think it is ridiculous to include a conservation status at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:39, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
"The Wild" doesn't need to refer to forests, or fields. To me, the wild is any place which is not captivity. Using that definition, only Convicts are actually not in the wild. Either way, I don't know of any major international or national organization which has attempted to classify Homo Sapiens as at risk or of least concern. All of that said, I do agree that we are at risk, only by our own actions, however, and we certainly are not "critically endangered" by any means. Not yet, at least... All of that said, I've marked this as answered. Two users have replied and agree that it doesnot need a conservation status. If 71.98.201.3 has an issue with this, feel free to post on my talk page. m8e3906:23, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
You are asking for an exception to made to the taxobox in this particular case that the authorities on this matter did not choose to make. Here on Wikipedia, every taxon, in this case Homo sapiens but there are countless others, which has been assessed a conservation status by the proper authorities, any such taxon is supposed to have it put in their taxobox. Your logic about how the word "in the wild/captivity" not really applying to human beings, that's interesting and all, but you should address it to the authorities who decided to assign a Conservation Status to this species, don't you think? I mean, we're just dutifully passing on this information to the reader in a routine way. Besides, I don't think its ridiculous despite your points. I personally benefited from learning that fact from this article. For me, it was interesting and nice for me to learn that the proper experts have given us a clean bill of health, if you will. You hear people talk a lot about how maybe we're "digging our own graves" with all our polluting and such, and you can reply "well, experts say that we're in no danger of that for the foreseeable future" and hand them that citation. So that's another possible reader benefit it may have. So why you may find it "ridiculous" to assign us one, that doesn't have to be true for everyone. And I don't understand why anyone would find it "offensive", but the fact that someone might find something offensive has never been grounds to remove anything from Wikipedia. Chrisrus (talk) 18:41, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I'll argue to keep it. I like to imagine that the person reading this article would be like the captain from Wall-E, searching his computer for information about Earth. The question here is not about policy but of readership and understanding. We are not here, writing this document that is Wikipedia, for some abstract information god. We are writing it for ourselves: to inform and preserve information and history. In my opinion, the article is inconsistent in its idea of readership, and sometimes does not define things well enough. This page is like the starting page of knowledge: everything there is to know begins here, with the study of we the humans. We have things like music and war, philosophy and language, technology and currency. These are the building blocks of civilization, the root of the human condition itself. The human conservation rating may seem obvious to us, but we are writing this document for all people of all time. What of the North Korean that has never learned the truth? What of the boy born into radical islam that has been fed lies? The girl deprived of education, and the victim of traumatic memory loss? We are prosperous in number now, but what will be said in a hundred years? A thousand? We must include all that we can, to save ourselves. StainlessSteelScorpion (talk) 02:39, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
I think random is good in this case. And the image is aesthetically interesting. Picture Cavalcades always get boring and ugly and who is or isnt to be included always becomes a topic of contention.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·13:37, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
Assertions that are not supportable
While many species communicate, language is unique to humans is self-contradictory unless a much more restricted meaning for "language" is used than the one the word points to! Psycholinguistically, "language" is the tool communicators use for communication, and is distinct from the expressive modality in which a given communication is encoded. The only thing "unique to humans" is the variety of modalities we have available. 16:04, 15 November 2014 (UTC) by Mairead, a psychologist and polyglot.
No, it is not selfcontradictory. Communication and language is not the same. All animals communicate, even plants communicate. Only humans have language as the concept is defined by linguists - Language as such is characterized by a particular kind of sound structure with a syntax that allows for multimodality and for creating infinite expressions from a finite set of elements. I dont know anyone who would use language in the broad definition you are giving and indeed most research on the nature of language would be made absurd if it were adopted (for example the research on "the evolution of language"). Maunus, linguist and polyglot. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·16:37, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
Compilation images usually aren't as aesthetically interesting as single images. They can be useful, like on mammal, where we want to show that the term includes everything from squirrels to whales. But the difference in pigmentation between humans isn't important enough to replace a good image. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 23:45, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
Trade and Economics
I have to say the section on trade and economics is pretty confusing and misleading, every historical claim it makes is false, and it's worth noting that there are no citations whatsoever in this section. Any familiarity with anthropology and the history of economics would understand that the following section is a confusion, "The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and services". By no means should we say that barter was the original form of trade or exchange. Reciprocity in gift exchange, like in Melanesian Kula exchange or Kwakiutl Potlach, was a significant feature of pre-market societies. Spot trading or barter happening more-or-less on the very fringes of society when dealing with potential enemies. Credit also predates currency. Redistributive hierarchies also allowed for division of labor without any direct forms of exchange. I feel the urge to rewrite this section, but instead I think I'll just remove the historical claims instead. this section is also focused on economics as a field of study, not on the actual economic arrangements of humans in an ethnographic manner (as one would expect from this section). Nik323 (talk) 20:41, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
more importantly, even if a redirect, why should an obscure scifi term be the 3rd fact encountered by a person reading this article?76.254.32.2 (talk) 07:00, 24 December 2014 (UTC) (mercurywoodrose)
There is an RFC that may affect this page at WikiProject Tree of Life. The topic is Confusion over taxonomy of subtribe Panina and taxon homininae (are chimps hominins)?
Include bonobos along with chimpanzees in the mention of human's closest (genus Pan) relatives
Please change
"The closest living relatives of humans are chimpanzees (genus Pan) and gorillas (genus Gorilla)."
to
"The closest living relatives of humans are chimpanzees and bonobos (genus Pan) and gorillas (genus Gorilla)."
Bonobos could also be included in the sentences immediately following, as well.
According to the Bonobo article, the current research places bonobos and chimpanzees as equally close relatives to humans, although there is evidence that the common ancestor to all three was probably more bonobo-like than chimpanzee-like or human-like. Bonobos are certainly closer relatives to humans than are gorillas.
The ignoring of bonobos is a common practice when human relatives are discussed. This contributes to their being less well-known, which impacts conservation efforts for a severely endangered important species. Wikipedia should not encourage this practice.
Often Chimpanzee is used as the genus name for Pan including both P. troglodytes and P. paniscus. That is the usage in the sentence you suggest to change. If we add P. paniscus then we would also have to add the species of Gorilla. No need to complicate it further in that particular sentence/·maunus · snunɐɯ·13:51, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Ok, you're right, we aren't speaking about particular species but particular genera. But what describes Pan (genus) more precisely, "chimpanzees" or "chimpanzees and bonobos"? We're saying that Homo is closest to Pan, not per se "Chimpanzees", right? Chrisrus (talk) 14:04, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
I think saying "Chimpanzees (genus Pan)" is pretty specifically showing that the word Chimpanzee in this case is meant to refer to the genus and not the species.·maunus · snunɐɯ·16:44, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
A lack of understanding of those facts is not the problem. The discussion is about whether it's better to call the genus Pan "the chimpanzees" or "the chimpanzees and bonobos". Now that nowadays experts are also using the term "chimpanzee" in contrast with "bonobo", speaking for example as they do about "chimpanzees and bonobos", as if a bonobo were not also a chimpanzee. It is legitimate to think of a bonobo as a kind of chimpanzee or as something close to but not a chimpanzee. For example, if an expert says "That's not a chimpanzee, that's a bonobo", it means "that's not a P. troglodytes, it's a P. paniscus. Therefore, since the name of P. paniscus has been changed from "pigmy chimpanzee" to "bonobo", the world "chimpanzee" has become ambiguous, sometimes referring to all of the genus Pan, and sometimes, as when they speak of "chimpanzees and bonobos", to specifically the common chimpanzee. Therefore, there are at least two legitimate aposotives for the noun phrase "the genus Pan": "Chimpanzees" or "chimpanzees and bonobos". The latter choice of the two as it's less ambiguous as to whether it means just the common chimpanzee, which is as you know incorrect, or both the common chimpanzee and the bonobo at the same time, which is as you know correct. Chrisrus (talk) 04:00, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
In part, we're talking about the difference between descriptivism and proscriptivism; language has indeed been shifting to be more ambiguous in the use of the term "chimpanzee", and at the same time trying to compensate by saying "chimpanzees and bonobos" instead of "common chimpanzees and bonobos". Should we only follow this pattern in our language use (descriptivism), should we be stricter in our language use (proscriptivism), or should we find some spot between where we note these shifts in language but are also a force that helps bring that language to a better place? I think we should choose to be that force. I think we should be a subtle thorn in the side of those who both make false dichotomies and those who overly lump things together. I think we should strive to be the best at our language use so that others will want to also strive to be better.
So when an expert says, "That's not a chimpanzee, that's a bonobo," the expert is using sloppy language, and he likely knows it. If we quote directly, we quote directly. But if we're writing our own description of what he means, we can say "X is not a common chimpanzee, it's a bonobo." The name of P. paniscus hasn't changed - it's had many names for quite a long time, be it "pygmy chimpanzee", or "gracile chimpanzee", or "bonobo". What's shifted is which of those names has primacy, and what the political ramifications of that shift are. Frans de Waal was and continues to be a significant driving force in the language shift, because of the work he'd done with bonobos in zoos. This work set the bonobos apart from common chimps. However, there has been other work with wild bonobos that show they are much more like common chimps in their behaviors in the wild, the implication of which is that what separates common chimps from bonobos most is our language.
Back a bit more on topic, if we're describing the genus alone, saying "common chimpanzees and bonobos" is good. When we're describing it in the context of other genera, all of which are described in a minimal fashion that doesn't list out all of the species in the genera, then "chimpanzees" is the better description. Bonobos are still chimpanzees, they are just a different species of chimpanzee just like the western gorilla is a species of gorilla. The only difference is that "wester gorilla" has "gorilla" in it, but "bonobo" doesn't have "chimpanzee" in it. Is so very much wish that whomever termed it the "bonobo" had instead termed it the "bonobo chimpanzee"; we'd never have any of these confusions and disagreements or sloppy uses of language. - UtherSRG(talk)14:40, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia shouldn't sometimes use "chimpanzees" to mean "chimpanzees and bonobos" and other times use it to mean "common chimpanzees." The term "chimpanzee" isn't either properly used or commonly understood to apply to two different species with very different behaviors. It would be better to talk about "members of the genus Pan" to refer to both, and "the chimpanzee" or "the bonobo" to refer to specific species. Why avoid the term "bonobo" in this sentence when many people (including Wikipedia Yeoman Editor Francis Hannaway) have stated their belief the further research will show that Pan paniscus is actually a closer human relative than Pan troglodytes? Ask a primatologist about the proper terminology...
73.202.43.214 (talk) 20:04, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
I'll repeat... There are two species of chimpanzee: the common chimpanzee (also known as the robust chimpanzee) and the bonobo (also known as the gracile chimpanzee). All bonobos are chimpanzees, but not all chimpanzees are bonobos. If we modify the sentence to include "bonobo", then we should also modify it to include all of the gorilla species. There isn't only one gorilla species, and there isn't only one chimpanzee species. We have listed the relationships at the genus level. It would be odd to mix and match both genus and species names in that sentence. Either we should only list genus-level information, as we've done, or we should list only species-level information. The latter is more awkward. Better is what we have and to have the conversation about terminology, which is done well at chimpanzee.
As for saying that the bonobo is closer to humans than the common chimp - that would be very incorrect. The most recent common chimp / bonobo ancester is a descendant of the most recent chimp / human ancester; both chimp species are equally closely related to humans. The two Pan species split apart about a million years ago; Pan split from the Homo line between 4 and 13 million years ago.
You are correct, though - Wikipedia should minimize the use of "chimpanzee" for both the genus and the species. However, that is how the word is used. When easily done, it should be noted how the word is used. In the sentence in question, we've done that by indicating we're talking about the genus. - UtherSRG(talk)20:41, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
You are correct about when the splitting of the lines occurred. But if P. troglodytes has diverged more from the original Pan line than P. paniscus has, then P. paniscus is closer genetically to the the common ancestor of both the Pan and Australopithecus/Homo lines - which would make P. paniscus closer to us genetically. More research will determine if this is true.
I don't have a problem with the use of "gorilla" to refer to all species in the Gorilla genus. I don't consider those species to be vastly different in behavior or social structure. But maybe I just don't know enough about gorillas. I'm willing to listen if someone argues that the term "gorilla" should no longer be used to refer to more than one species.
Studying the differences between P. troglodytes and P. paniscus, though, is very important to understanding the behaviors of the human species - since we can see human similarities to both. The consensus among experts in the field these days is that there is so much difference between them that the very well-known name "chimpanzee" would be confusing if it were to continue to be applied to both species.
Saying "chimpanzees (genus Pan)" was intended to make the "two species" meaning unambiguous. But it doesn't work. To the lay reader who knows little about bonobios, it still could (indeed would) read as meaning "chimpanzees in the genus Pan."
(My apologies for formatting your reply - this makes it easier to tell who is writing what.) It is extremely highly unlikely that P. paniscus and P. troglodytes have evolved at vastly different rates; that's not how evolutionary drift works, nor is that how we measure evolutionary distances anyway. And if anything, P. paniscus, with its smaller home range, would have a greater competition pressure, leading to a higher rate of change relative to P. troglodytes. This would mean it would be futher from the original Pan line. This is contrary to your thesis that seems to be derived from "bonobos act more like humans in some ways, so they must be more like us genetically, so they must be closer to the original Pan line." This is poor reasoning; it ignores the possibility of parallel evolution, for one, and it over emphasizes the similarities of social behavior of humans and bonobos, which is not borne out in studying wild bonobos, only zoo-raised bonobos.
We do not need to spell it out every time. It's spelled out clearly at chimpanzee, common chimpanzee, and bonobo. It's spelled out in other places where the main topic is closer to the subject of Pan. This place is not the right place to discuss it. - UtherSRG(talk)15:03, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
Some geneticists believe that chimps and bonobos should be placed in the genus Homonidae as apposed to Pan, but officially they aren't hominids Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 23:07, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Well they are already in Hominidae and are Hominids, I think they ("some geneticists") meant they should be placed in genus Homo. Editor abcdef (talk) 00:21, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I reverted som tag bombing of the lead. The lead is ont required to have citations, since material in the lead is supposed to be cited in the ody. Almost all of the tags are cited in the body of the text. I also removed a tag "disputing" the uniqueness of human reliance on language and symbolic communication. There is no basis for disputing this. Even if it is admitted that some other species have symbolic communication it is completely unquestionable that humans rely on it to an incomparably greater degree. A very serious source disputing the iuniueness of human language would have to be produced for the topic even to be worthy of discussion. ·maunus · snunɐɯ·15:32, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 19 June 2015
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Bold and controversial assertion in the lead re: Religion
It is claimed that: "Curiosity and the human desire to understand and influence the environment and to explain and manipulate phenomena (or events) has provided the foundation for developing science, philosophy, mythology, religion, anthropology, and numerous other fields of knowledge."
For religion this is not backed in the main body of the text. Instead in the main body the evolution of religion is left open: "The evolution and the history of the first religions have recently become areas of active scientific investigation."
Agent-detection is only one of the many theories to (partly) explain the evolution of religion. Others include for an example death anxiety (Becker, terror management theory) and group selection (E.O. Wilson, Sloan Wilson, Haidt and others). Religions have created taboos and areas of forbidden knowledge, and often been hostile to "curiosity" and "desire to understand", with huge variation between different religions, making a concept of 'generic religion' highly problematic. 37.136.30.75 (talk) 17:49, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Human: Origins of civilization
This article states "Ancient Greece was the seminal civilization that laid the foundations of Western culture, being the birthplace of Western philosophy, democracy, major scientific and mathematical advances, the Olympic Games, Western literature and historiography, as well as Western drama, including both tragedy and comedy.[51"
It was quite a shock to read this patently untrue and biased sentence in Wikipedia.
It is certainly broadly known that scientific and mathematical advances originated in the civilizations of Africa, not in Greece. Why does this sentence talk only about "Western civilization?" What is that? Civilized societies in Africa and likely in the Americas pre-dated those of Europe, as well as governmental structures (by the way, define "democracy"--how does it relate to the early tribal societies of Africans and Native Americans, which were certainly based on structures relating to the people as a whole, not to artificial constructs like "democracy."). The sentence at the beginning of this commentary is nothing but a VERY NON-SCIENTIFIC, European oriented hodge podge including such non-related items as the Olympic Games, Western literature, etc. And what is the definition of WESTERN?
This part of the discussion does not stand up to Wikipedia's usually more scientific and non-biased articles. Additionally, most of the illustrations depicting modern humans show European types, which represent a minority of the world's population. I don't have the time to include citations here as this is not my normal calling, but I would suggest that your editors take a look at the broadly biased and unscientific reflections in the sentence at the beginning of this commentary and completely revise it to include the contributions of African and Native American societies from both North and South America. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.124.218.115 (talk) 00:46, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
Actually, that sentence is correct. It mentions ADVANCES of mathematics and science, which WERE made in ancient Greece, and it indeed laid the foundations of western culture. Yes, it only talks about western culture, but remember that this page is about the human race, NOT about their culture, and no matter what freakin' way you want to turn it, Western culture IS the dominant culture on earth. Look at Wikipedia: English is by far the largest. Look at language: English is the most important language in the world (at the moment at least, I'm not talking about 50 years into the future). Look at major sports like football and tennis: Originate from Europe. Look at the most-played theathre pieces: Shakespeare still at one.
Also, notice how it never talks about "Western civilization" despite that being an important part of what you wrote. And it talks about modern democracy, where a large group of people (in Ancient Greece 20 000, in modern times many millions) is ruled in the way called "democracy". Basically, the government of a group of people that is so large that people from the group cannot all know one another (as this is the point from which you'll need a government to keep things going, because people can't care for people they don't know).
And the definition of Western, for your information, is "(West-)European and North American". About those illustrations... We're on the English wikipedia right here, aren't we? Well, let's use the people a standard person browsing the English wikipedia will be familiar with. Should we use someone from India? No, they, for a large part, speak Hindi. Chinese? They speak Mandarin. Latino? They speak Spanish. Leaves only negro and causican. Now, are the more negroïd or more causican people in the USA, Canada and Great Britain (oh you know what, lets add other countries where English is a compulsory subject at school AND that are rich enough that people have internet, like the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, etc). Either way, we're going to end with a FAR majority of the readers of this page being causican, with, I would say, negro and hindi (I guess?) being second and third. Don't talk about even representation of the world's population when the group of people who might read this is not a representation of the world's population.
And yeah, North and South American societies... As I already said, this page isn't about human culture, it's about human life, and tell me, how many millions of people live in traditional Native American ways, and how many in traditional European ways? Before you're gonna add North and South America you're AT LEAST going to have to add Chinese, for example. As I already said though, the Chinese will most likely read this page in another language, and therefore that information should be on THAT page. 217.121.176.170 (talk) 19:00, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
There is a part in here which states "They began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago, and migrated in successive waves to occupy". There were Australian Aboriginal remains that have been dated back to more than 60,000 years ago. Obviously this sentence is false. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.154.196.76 (talk) 00:19, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/217.121.176.170, this article should not only focus on European people, culture, and those influenced by it. Your arguments sound as supportive of European superiority which is against NPOV. Dimadick (talk) 10:02, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
I disagree strongly. There should be a clearer emphasis on European culture and civilization in the article. That is not a point of view with undue weight, it is empirically observable and verifiable. Without European science and medicine there would be no more than 1 billion of us, not over 7 billion. And average life expectancy would be around 35 years and most people would be illiterate and suffer from constant malnutrition and other ailments. European achievements of ocean navigation, telegraphy, rail transport, telephone, automobile, radio, aeroplane, television and internet shortened insurmountable physical distances to networks of instant global communication. We know what an 'earthrise' looks like from the Moon and from Mars, thanks to European science. And we know that celestial bodies are not gods but planets, in a galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars like our own, in a universe of billions of galaxies. Western culture has changed the view of man's place in the universe from Galileo to Darwin, Pasteur, Einstein.
The modern humanity is of European cultural and social origin. Most of the rest of the world are copying and have been copying western science, medicine, technology, agriculture, pop culture, clothing, art forms, sports... and have become unrecognizble from the societies they were before European influence. It is semantics whether to call it "the superiority of European culture", but it is easy to support with completely neutral arguments the point that a culture that multiplies food production, eradicates infant mortality, developes the concept of universal human rights and high art, music and literature and makes possible healthier and much longer lives, and puts man on the moon and soon to Mars and beyond, is a superior culture. Why would nearly everyone be adopting something that is inferior? We are progressing towards ever increasing global adoption of western standards as universal human standards. Just compare todays young and modern Chinese to those of Mao's cultural revolution. The European impact on mankind has been unique. In science, art, technology, philosophy. In good and in bad. This is all easily verifiable. To the contrary it would be a biased POV to deny this self-evident reality. It would be an entirely different humanity, different 'human' (the topic of this article) without the European hegemony. If we look at what man have become, how the world has changed in the past centuries, that very much is a European story. To tell another story would be to tell a falsehood. And therefore that should be reflected in the article. It is only neutral. 188.67.235.166 (talk) 20:42, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Misleading caption under picture of population map
This picture is found in the infobox. The range of humans is clearly 100% of the map, unless I'm misinterpreting the definition of 'range' to be something other than the distance something can travel. Still, a caption reading "Population map of homo sapiens" would be more accurate. Phil.wasag (talk) 23:28, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
The problem seems to be that the map is mislabeled - it is a map of population density, as the (omitted) key shows [[2]. The grey areas are "Uninhabited or extremely low population". I note however that no source is given for the image either, which leads me to wonder whether we should be using it at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:50, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
The current article compares the hair thickness of humans to other apes when it says,"Humans' thinner body hair and more productive sweat glands help avoid heat exhaustion while running for long distances", but at least the statement about thinner hair is not true for Mongoloids. According to this forensic anthropology website (link), Mongoloids have the thickest hair of all races which can be as thick as 120 micrometers in diameter, and Negroids have the thinnest hair of all races which can be as thin as 60 micrometers in diameter. In Chemical and Physical Behavior of Human Hair, Clarence R. Robbins (1994) in the third paragraph of page 328 states that the average Caucasian hair diameter is 70 micrometers. On the cover of the October 7, 2011, issue of Science magazine (link), there is a magnified image of an aboriginal Australian hair that they measured to be 80 micrometers in diameter. In Mechanical analysis of infant carrying in hominoids, Lia Q. Amaral (2008) on the data table of page 282 says gorilla hair is 66 micrometers in diameter, gibbon hair is 52 micrometers in diameter and orangutan hair is 120 micrometers in diameter. In the paragraph entitled "Naked eye examination" in page 48 of the book Forensic Medicine, Guharaj & Chandran (2003) state that "Animal hair is generally longer and thicker compared to human hair", so they leave open the possibility that some humans (e.g. Mongoloids) have hair that is thicker than some non-human animal species.
If the current sentence is left in the article, it needs to have a word like "generally" added to make it true for very thick Mongoloid hair. The thickest Mongoloid hair (120 micrometers) is almost twice as thick as gorilla hair (66 micrometers), so the statement about humans having thinner body hair than other apes is false, and that statement should either be modified with the addition of the word "generally" or removed from this article.--Ephert (talk) 05:53, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
The current article states that, "Humans have proportionately shorter palates and much smaller teeth than other primates.", but, in absolute terms, there are humans with larger teeth than some other species of primates. This sentence is ambiguous, because it is not clear if the word "proportionately" extends to both the "shorter palates" and the "much smaller teeth" or if it just refers to the first part about "shorter palates". The photographs to the right show that the indigenous Brazilian person has larger teeth than the Tarsier, so this sentence could not mean that humans have smaller teeth than all other species of primates in absolute terms. I propose that this sentence in the article be changed to "Humans have proportionately shorter palates and proportionately smaller teeth than other primates" to make the meaning of the sentence unambiguous. I also think that it would be helpful for someone to fact-check this claim in the actual book if they are fortunate enough to have access to it.--Ephert (talk) 12:39, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
I think the word "proportionately" applies to the tooth size as well, but if you repeat the word that would make it clearer. Or we could say "....smaller teeth than other apes". Chrisrus (talk) 14:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
The second photography in Religion and spirituality section
I think that this image, representing leaders of four differnet religions should be used instead of the actual picture, representing a specific person, not so famous one.
Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Cannolis (talk) 15:32, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
This aboriginal Australian man is playing a didgeridoo.
I think that this photograph of an aboriginal Australian man playing a didgeridoo should either be used as a replacement for the painting of the white woman writing sheet music or used alongside that image in a side-by-side double image for the "Art, music, and literature" section. Historically, aboriginal Australians such as the man in the photograph have variously been classified as belonging to the Australoid race, and the Australoid race has variously been regarded as one of the principal races of humanity, so this article's current lack of any Australoid representative seems like a major oversight. Some people may point out that the images of the Thai man and woman, the Punjabi woman and the indigenous Bali Aga people of Indonesia sufficiently cover the due representation for the Australoid race, since South Asian and Southeast Asian people have variously been regarded as being peoples with admixture from the Australoid race, but I still believe that an image of an aboriginal Australian, Andamanese or a Papuan person might be needed to undeniably show that this article is not blatantly excluding Australoids or overlooking the existence of Australoids. I understand that aboriginal Australian, Andamanese and Papuan individuals make up a very small percentage of the global population, so not having an image of a person from these populations might make sense to people who believe that representation in this article should be based on a group's percentage of the global human population. Some people may view that standard as being both fair and logical, but unequal representation could be interpreted as implying certain groups of people are relatively more important than other groups of people or, worse still, that some groups of people are not as human as other groups of people, since this Wikipedia article is the article about humans. The latter consideration is especially relevant considering the history of the aboriginal Australians. In Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, A. Dirk Moses (2004) on the bottom of page 5 quotes a historical statement made by a white man from the late nineteenth century who said that an aboriginal Australian man had the deportment of a "sapient monkey", and that "it is their fate to be abolished; and they are already vanishing". In Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical Representation, David B. MacDonald (2008) on the bottom of page 65 says that eighteenth century accounts of aboriginal Australians describe them as "the lowest race in the scale of humanity", "a species of... tail-less monkeys" and "the connecting link between man and monkey tribe". In Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, A Dirk Moses (2008) on page 147 in citation 43 said that a group of white people from the late eighteenth century described aboriginal Australians as seeming "to occupy the last grade of man before passing on to the ape family". After reading these historical accounts of the way some white people viewed aboriginal Australians as not being human, I think that the inclusion of an image of an aboriginal Australian in the human article is particularly warranted.--Ephert (talk) 17:23, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Population groups analogous to most classic races do in fact exist, and are easily identified by forensic anthropologists. Alas, many laypeople have gotten confused over the subject matter, and thus make incorrect assertions like race not existing or being unscientific, exacerbated by some social groups pushing misinformation onto the general population. There is a great deal of polymorphism within individual populations of humans, but there are also a number of major group differences in both genotype and phenotype - if there were not, we would never have been able to identify races in the first place.
As for the image itself - I have no problem with the inclusion of the additional image on the page, but it is worth noting that there is no particular impetus to do so; there are large numbers of population groups on Earth depending on how you subdivide them, far too many to be included in the Wikipedia article. Titanium Dragon (talk) 05:50, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Your claim that population groups exist is simply circular logic. There is no anthropological criteria which can unambiguously classify all skeletal remains into one of a finite number (four, three, five? ten? twelve?) of "groups". That is, races don't objectively exist. The concept does have contextually useful value, with definitions which are quite different (and often inconsistent) depending on context, but real utility is not the same as them being objectively "real". There simply is not, and probably never will be, any consensus definition of the criteria necessary for unambiguous assignment, nor does there exist, and probably never will exist, any single classification system. (Although, the claim of "no scientific basis" is just as inaccurate.) The problems arising from this fact often occur when anthropological or cultural race classifications are used in biology. To be clear, race is not a construct which SHOULD be used in discussing our species' biology. (even in anthropology, the use of fossil evidence of ancient remains to classify into modern categories is extra-scientific, imho, requiring arbitrary assumptions not in evidence.)216.96.78.78 (talk) 21:34, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 24 September 2015
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Citation found for excerpt:
"Like all mammals, humans are a diploid eukaryotic species. Each somatic cell has two sets of 23 chromosomes, each set received from one parent; gametes have only one set of chromosomes, which is a mixture of the two parental sets. Among the 23 pairs of chromosomes there are 22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. Like other mammals, humans have an XY sex-determination system, so that females have the sex chromosomes XX and males have XY.[citation needed]"
It is not true that all humans have 23 chromosome pairs. You editors probably know better, yet you erroneously claim some precise number of chromosomes exists in each somatic cell of each human being. Sloppy.216.96.78.78 (talk) 21:04, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
Why is the picture shown any better than a picture I could take with me and my girlfriend? The picture is old. The clothes are hiding a lot of skin and features. The picture is unappealing. There really isn't a single reason why it should be the picture chosen.
So can somebody add a new photo which is appealing and not as 'weird'. Wikipedia can really do better than this.
There has been a lot of discussion about this picture and the consensus have always been to keep it. Now if you can provide us with a better one and convince other editors, you are welcome. Remember, Wikipedia is you. Personally if find it quite fitting : most homo sapiens sapiens wear clothes, are Asian and work in the field. That is a fact. Xerxes(contact)00:37, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
Asking for unclothed humans for the picture in this article is like asking for skinned mammals in various mammal articles, it's perfectly natural and normal for humans to wear clothing. Editor abcdef (talk) 00:58, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
Scroll down a bit to see the anatomical exterior frontal and dorsal views.
Please suggest another picture. It may help you to know that as I recall, merits previously pointed out in favor of this picture focused its representativeness, an ordinary pair bond of peasant farmers, the typical occupation from the stone age to quite recently. The posture showing how the anatomy of each sex tends to carry weight when engaged in typical work with the typical effects of that work on the environment apparent in the background.
Points made against it include that we were in the stone age longer and that most people aren't peasants anymore. There should be babies, children, or elderly people. A composite picture of representative sample of the entire population would theoretically be even more representative of average humans. Also, that an idealized, rather than realistic, picture would be more appropriate. So far this has won out over all contenders, but please do submit another - there must be a way to improve it even more. Good luck and happy editing! Chrisrus (talk) 01:27, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
For a picture that is supposed to represent the entire human race, the expression on their faces, especially the male are rather negative. The man is scrawling, the woman looks embarrassed. Perhaps we could find a more positive pictures so viewers unfamiliar with the species won't think they are hostile ;) Perhaps this would be better
"At the Nudist camp" differs very little from the lead picture of the anatomy section. Why have another?
The pioneer plaque illustration has been suggested before and has been chosen for this purpose on many of the cooresponding artiles on other Wikipedias, and is a very popular and good suggestion for the lead photo of this article. As I recall it was not chosen here before on the grounds that this one gives more information and is more realistically representative as opposed to idealized. I'd add that it also is quite the same as the lead anatomy section picture we already are using, but if you swap it out and argue well you may find more support this time. Chrisrus (talk) 19:39, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Let's use a better picture. The current one "One male, one female" is not representative of all races. We need one that gives equal footing to every race. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Empr1ze (talk • contribs) 08:05, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
'Race' is a social construct, with no agreed definition - making what you are proposing not only misleading, but actually impossible. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:48, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
The Pioneer picture has the benefit of being created/selected by a reliable third party to represent homo sapiens and thus is in principle more neutral than anything chosen by wp editors. [Recognising of course that to choose this 3rd party selected image rather than another is itself a {biased?} choice on my part]. The NASA image can certainly be criticised: it shows its age - the figures are clearly Caucasian and the depiction of external female genitalia is rather coy - so I suspect if it were to be redone today it might well be different. Nevertheless it was chosen explicitly to depict humans. My 2c worth anyway. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:03, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Simple black and white sketches should not be used if real photographs are available, the current photo already clearly depicts an adult male and female human of the currently most common race (East Asian) in their natural appearance (with clothing), I don't think a poorly drawn black and white image intended for potential extrasolar life is enough to replace the former. Editor abcdef (talk) 09:26, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
The Pioneer one is currently in the news for being both racist and sexist (with the guy doing the greeting) -- they are holding a contest to design a new one so that might be worth a look when it happens ... though the current thailand one seems good and representative, if you picked a random couple from the Earth that's what you'd be most likely to get. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.26.239.146 (talk) 16:01, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
How about changing it up a bit?
How about changing up the image a bit? A couple Europeans? A couple Subsaharan Africans? A couple Middle-Easterners? Amerindians? Perhaps a collage? -- Director(talk)01:08, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
The article begins like this: "Modern humans (Homo sapiens, primarily ssp. Homo sapiens sapiens) are the only extant members of the hominin clade (or human clade)..."
Clicking the link on the word 'hominin' takes the viewer to the page for the tribe Hominini. On that page, it states that Hominini includes both the genus Homo as well as the genus Pan, which would mean that humans are not the only extant members of the Hominini clade, since chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) would also be members of that clade. I believe that the 'hominin clade' being referred to is actually the subtribe Hominina, of which Homo sapiens really are the only extant member. Links to the page for Hominina redirect to the page for the genus Homo, though. I wouldn't think that would matter since, according to that page, Homo is the only genus in that subtribe, but that might matter to someone.
The word 'hominin' is meant to be used to describe members of Hominina[1]. I'm not sure if there is a word used to describe members of Hominini. If there was, I'm not sure when it would be used. (It's not hominine; that describes members of the subfamily Homininae. Man, these terms are confusing.) Jackk225 (talk) 22:02, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Hey, thanks for your input. I just don't think that the way that the number is presented on Human is accurate, thus my removal -- even if it does say the 23 -> 24 difference, I don't think that it explains the difference well enough -- and I don't think we can explain how there is less than 95% difference as the information is presented. But I'll keep your reversion there because it seems that it can just be worded better, not to be removed altogether. Thanks, DoomLexus (talk) 02:13, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm no expert on the subject but the section you removed was well referenced and seems up to WP standards. If you don't like the wording you might consider rephrasing it, provided that you don't misrepresent the sources. And don't throw the baby out with the bathwater! nagualdesign02:41, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
"They" to "we"
Being we are humans and humans are likely the only people to read Wikipedia, would it be appropriate to have it read that way? As of right now it sounds like the person that wrote it doesn't think they are human. Velostodon (talk) 16:07, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
I see User:Signedzzz removed the image, despite the note in the code that says "The choice of image has been discussed at length. Please don't change it without first obtaining consensus." Given the wacky debate over this image, stretching over half a decade, this is probably reasonable, so I'm reverting the change. —MillingMachine (talk) 16:07, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I saw the note. I removed it, I did not change it. The situation is analogous to the pictures at African American, Jews etc. After years of pointless debate, it was finally realised that there was no good reason to have a "lead picture" anyway. zzz (talk) 16:09, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
No it is not analogous, since this is not a gallery and there is wide consensus that the current picture is adequate. Dont remove the note.·maunus · snunɐɯ·18:19, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
"Humans are one of the relatively few species to have sufficient self-awareness to recognize themselves in a mirror."
The citation given is not about self-awareness at all; it's a psychologist's essay about narcissism. No mention that I can see of the comparison of humans to other animals nor the recognition of the self in mirrors. Either we need a new citation for this factoid, or we need to delete the sentence.
As far as I know (I'm a philosopher, Jim, not a doctor!) humans are the only species to recognize themselves in a mirror. But I don't have any citation for it. Perhaps someone else does? Or a citation for the evidence that at least one other animal can recognize itself in the mirror?
Several other species including corvids and primates and even octopuses have been reported to pass the mirror test for selfawareness.·maunus · snunɐɯ·01:32, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
If this article isn't making it perfectly clear that there is a smooth transition between such referents as Behaviourally modern humans and anatomically modern humans to other species of the Homo genus that are human in some ways and not in others, and on to other more basal hominids which probably aren't very human comparatively, well, then, this article needs fixing so that that will be abundantly clear. It is as legitimate to, in some contexts, use a stricter definition as it is in others to use a broader one.
This article is called 'Human' and in the very first sentence equates that term with the species Homo sapiens, not with the genus Homo. So it really does look there is a case to answer that this (or Homo sapiens) is a wp:FORK, and one of them should become a redirect. [IMO, human should redirect to Homo, not Homo Sapiens, but that is another debate].
Oppose both proposed merges. The word human is not synonymous with Homo sapiens, its meaning is both wider (including the full cultural and philosophical aspects of what it means to be human) and narrower than "Homo sapiens" (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis for example is not prototypically "human"). We clearly need articles on both topics.·maunus · snunɐɯ·19:55, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Strong Oppose. Us humans (here us talking) are part of the subspecies homo sapiens sapiens. The articles should not be merged and the lead of Human should be rewritten to:
With "a see the disambiguation" at the top of the page for any other uses of the word human, such other (now extinct) subspecies of homo sapiens like Homo sapiens idaltu and the other species in the genus Homo as mentioned by Dimadick. Regarding the Behavioral modernity article I think it either should be changed to:
In any case all articles should obviously accurately reflect this image [6]. In short I think it is wrong to do a major overhaul in merging Homo sapiens and Human.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
"Culture" is now "Behavior"?
Back in July 2015 (almost a year ago), 22merlin changed the title of the Culture section to "Behavior", with the edit summary being only "standardisation". I could not find anything in the Talk archives regarding a relevant discussion. Can anyone explain the rationale behind this change? MarqFJA87 (talk) 19:54, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure. Is it a better or worse summary of the contents of that section? It does standardize with the rest of Wikipedia, because most articles about species have such a section. Human behavior might be a result of instinct or an inborn tenancy to do something given certain factors, or it might be a feature of human culture. Maybe "Behavior" is better because it doesn't try to claim that these things are purely cultural and not the nature of the beast. Chrisrus (talk) 01:35, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Well, that is a good point, though it runs into the problem that giving it that title "Behavior" while also keeping "Psychology" as a separate section is confusing (unless the latter title means something other than what I'm thinking), which is only worsened by the fact that Human behavior -- one of the three articles listed as "Main article" for said section -- is in serious need of refinement and implies that psychology-based behavior is only one subset of the totality of "human behavior". MarqFJA87 (talk) 02:33, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a tough one. Maybe we should stop and figure this out for a second. This is a species article that is supposed to conform to the others, but it also encompasses the intellectual history and current state of thought about the referent, so it includes history and psychology and a philosophy and so on and so there are conflicts with the standard terminology at points.
That wasn't very helpful so maybe we could just ask at this point what a Venn diagram of the semantic areas of the two referents would look like?
I mean, culture is bigger than behavior because it includes not just what people do but also what they think, which is psychology.
First, you forgot to sign your post. I've done that for you this time just so people don't get confused when I add my response.
Second, while culture can be seen as the result of behavior and psychology intersecting each other, AFAIK it does not include all of either one. MarqFJA87 (talk) 15:41, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm confused. What precisely are you proposing to merge into the disambiguation page? A disambiguation page must follow WP:DAB and WP:MOSDAB guidelines. So how would the lengthy prose in this article be merged into the bulletted list format of a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser18:31, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
In that case, if I understand you, the merger is incorrectly proposed. There is nothing to merge to the disambiguation page. I think you want to merge (or perhaps more accurately to split) the contents of human to Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens. If there is consensus for that, then the disambiguation page should be moved to human. older ≠ wiser19:14, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Oppose - The only other pages for human are mainly works of art. Human meaning homo sapien is by far the most common usage. Jonpatterns (talk) 08:19, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
Oppose. This proposal is contrary to WP article naming conventions, and for good reason. From the relevant policy:
Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it generally prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. <snip> [e.g.] Guinea pig (not: Cavia porcellus)
Splitting the article in two would result in everlasting confusion over what goes where, and lots of stuff would likely end up in both new articles. Meanwhile, all the poor souls who type in "Human" with the expectation of finding an article will instead be confronted with a crossroads and no meaningful guidance for which road to take. The net effect is to make WP content less accessible and more confusing—the opposite of what we're after. Besides, plenty of excellent articles incorporate the several meanings of their titles, taking a holistic approach to their topics. In general, I think that has worked well here. Rivertorch's Evil Twin (talk) 04:54, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
This proposal is not contrary to WP article naming conventions. From the relevant guideline:
When what is the most common name in English, or the veracity of that most common name, is so disputed in reliable sources that it cannot be neutrally ascertained, prefer the common name most used (orthography aside) by international zoological nomenclature authorities over regional ones. When there is no common name or no consensus can be reached on the most common name, or if it isn't clear what taxon the common name refers to ..., use the scientific name:
Hmm, yes. Among other things, you're quoting a guideline, whereas I quoted a policy. (Rock, paper, scissors!) In any event, Homo sapiens sapiens, unlike Eulimella torquata, does have a common name. Rivertorch's Evil Twin (talk) 23:08, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Oppose No need to merge, this is clearly the primary topic. This merging madness is pure silliness, an encyclopedia that does not have an article on humans that covers the basic topics of human anatomy, history, culture and existence is a worthless encyclopedia.·maunus · snunɐɯ·01:16, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
Strong Oppose This article is titled humans. If someone wants to see anatomically modern humans, they will type in anatomically modern humans. For 99% of people this redirect would just be a nuisance. --Monochrome_Monitor02:42, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
The article says it's about Homo sapiens, and it seems reasonable to consider this is the primary topic for "Human". However that does make it a duplicate of Homo sapiens, which should be merged into this one. Of course "human" is also used to refer to Homo, but that's handled by the disambiguation header. An option would be to rename this article to "Modern human" and redirect both "Human" and "Homo sapiens" to that. Horatio (talk) 01:37, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
I suppose then it would be confused with Anatomically modern human, but that's already the case. Renaming this article to "Homo sapiens", redirecting Human to it, and merging in the existing Homo sapiens, would clarify everything. An article entitled "Human", which is unclear about whether it's refering to Homo sapiens or anatomically modern humans, is just confusing. Horatio (talk) 01:45, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
Please don't reply to reader feedback on articles in this way. This user is not talking about the referent of the article, humans, so WP:FORUM does not apply.
This reader is giving us feedback on the effect of the article on him/her. (S)he found the way it was written to be off-putting.
In the past other readers have expressed a similar overall impression taken away from the article before, so they may do so again.
We realize this may cause some phrases in Human to sound quite strange — "a majority of humans professes some variety of religious or spiritual belief" sounds almost like it was written by space aliens.
And later at the end:
Another method some editors use to help maintain a neutral point of view is to imagine being an extraterrestrial writing about a strange species called "human". How would your perspective be different?
This sounds inconsistent, as if the second part had been written by an editor who didn't notice that the "strange earthlings effect" had been mentioned already. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:50, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
As far as I can tell the prose for the FAQ was written by Silence in August 2009 and has seen little editing since. At the time it looks like the big discussion about the image was going on. Perhaps he can tell us where he got it. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 20:38, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Oh no, I just notice Silence has been silent since April 2016, so perhaps he won't. So you think we should just remove the paragraph or somehow combine the two? Richard-of-Earth (talk) 20:58, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
It should be enough to simply link the second paragraph somehow to the former "space aliens" reference, so that the reader sees it is acknowledged and won't be surprised (if only mildly), thinking "huh, haven't aliens been mentioned already"? But of course this is not an urgent problem, only a quibble. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:21, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Well, I find no consensus from when it was created that the last paragraph should be there. It seems like it was just Silence's idea and it is like writing advise not a policy or guideline. I have removed it. If some one would like to suggest an addition to the earlier paragraph, let's hear it. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 08:09, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
<Insert Silence speaks joke here.> Thanks for joining us. I didn't think it seemed important. It seems like it was accepted without much discussion, which could be taken as consensus. Looking at the history I see you had an asterisk (*) next to "space aliens" and the paragraph on the bottom was a note, so the two paragraphs were originally linked. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 19:14, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
Should we include a disclosure at the bottom that this article has unavoidably been written by its subject and may be subject to conflicts of interest? 193.1.100.69 (talk) 09:57, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
Hatnote
Praemonitus recently merged the longstanding two hatnotes; I reverted him and he reverted back, citing WP:Hatnote point 5;. The appropriate step now is to have a discussion per WP:BRD. I contend that the double hatnote is justified because:
It is more legible than a super-long merged hatnote.
One hatnote is about the term "Human", the other about the notion of "human race" which happens to redirect here, and must be distinguished from Race (human categorization); those two topics should not be conflated on the same line.
Correct me if I'm wrong: the resulting text is the same both ways; only the line break is different? If so, I like your version better. It doesn't have the awkward line break, so readability is enhanced. I'm not sure your second bullet point is especially important. Rivertorch's Evil Twin (talk) 15:55, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
How is it more legible? I wrapped it into a single paragraph, which is the same style as the remainder of the article. Are you unable to read it because there isn't a line break? That doesn't make sense. A hatnote is only there for people who arrived at the wrong page, which is presumably a very small minority. The goal should be to get the hatnote out of the way as quickly as possible. Besides, "5. If at all possible, limit hatnotes to just one at the top of the page." This is what I did. If anything, I think the sentence '"Human race" redirects here' can be purged without harming the statement. Praemonitus (talk) 16:13, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
I suggest adding "aptitude for complex spoken language" to list of characterizations
They are characterized by erect posture and bipedal locomotion; manual dexterity and increased tool use, compared to other animals; and a general trend toward larger, more complex brains and societies.[3][4]
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I Am not sure why they were removed....but I do question there usefulness. Is this article ilitrated in this maner for aliens? By the time someone can read this page the visual affects of the human life cycle would commonly be known to all humans. If it was images of one person aging over there life time, thus we could see a change that would add to the article. But random people at different ages looks odd. Side note should fix the sandwich text in that section per our MOS.--Moxy (talk) 06:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
No, it's not written for aliens, but you are right that it seems like that. Many have pointed that out here before, as it's not a way of looking at people that many people are used to. But that's just an artifact of writing encyclopedia article about humans, not an indication that we are expecting aliens or intelligent A.I. It's also a very useful perspective because, as has been said and demonstrated by many famous experts, looking at humans as if you were "an anthropologist from Mars" or as "the naked ape" lends an objectivity that's been very fruitful. Chrisrus (talk) 06:50, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 6 February 2017
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Please change "By February 2016, the global human population had exceeded 7.3 billion." to "By February 2017, the global population had exceeded 7.5 billion." because I fact checked with [1] on February 6th, 2017 and the projected population by the end of February was 7.5 billion people rounded. Just a quick update :) thanks 2600:1007:B016:C2C9:2DA3:8147:2087:D549 (talk) 05:00, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
I updated that prose to use the same source (ultimately the United Nations) as the human society statistics infobox that states 7.5 billion. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 21:28, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
In my opinion, the picture choice for this article is extremely irrelevant, and of poor quality overall.The resolution is so small that there is absolutely no analytical value to it whatsoever, and the subjects in choice bear no relevancy to the article outside of their being human. Additionally, even if they were relevant, they do not serve to represent the the wholeness of the human race, along with its diversity. Although i have no specific replacement in mind, I think it should be considered that the picture be changed to something that better reflects humans as a whole. A good example of something similar to this is the image present on the article about dogs. It shows multiple breeds, of varying shapes and sizes, within an acceptable resolution that allows analysis of the photo. It serves to represent just how diverse the species is, and how they have adapted over time. This is just one example out of the many articles about species that have proper format and context considered for their leading photo. If this page could accomplish something similar, I think it would contribute significantly to the overall quality of the page.
142.165.123.7 (talk) 23:07, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
I think a real photo, as opposed to a drawing would serve to better represent the article. However, if we were to head into the route of drawings, I would suggest Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man instead. Just a thought. 142.165.123.7 (talk) 23:21, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
This issue has been argued to death. A tiny sample can be seen at:
One issue mentioned about the Pioneer plaque is that it is rather misleading concerning what average humans look like, not to mention the anatomical defect for the female. Johnuniq (talk) 00:27, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
And? Just because that one image doesn't work, doesn't mean that another, different one can't. The problem still stands that the image being used currently is of extremely poor quality and deserves to be replaced, at least by something that is higher resolution. Additionally, if you're going to argue that the image needs to be representative of the majority of humans, that means that the current image is even worse, as last i checked, we aren't all Akha banana farmers from thailand.142.165.123.7 (talk) 00:47, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
This has been discussed here before. As I recall, although please do check the archives for this talk page, there were certain reason why we decided to go with the present picture over the detail from the plate aboard Voyager, which is also a fine choice and indeed used on other language Wikipedias for this purpose.
One was that we already have a picture like that, illustrating the exterior anatomy if you'll just scroll down to the anatomy section, you'll see it there. It is actually superior to that one in terms of detail. So, there's that.
But let's focus on the points above.
I don't remember this picture ever having been criticized on terms of resolution. If you have one with better resolution that you'd like to suggest put forward, because the pioneer plaque File:Human.svg isn't even in color and has little or no detail, and so this argument cannot be used to swap that one for this one.
I can't follow the logic of the lack of resolution rendering it "analytically useless".
Nor is it clear what it means to say that the present picture "bears no relevency other than their being human. Would you say that a picture of a swan bears no relevancy other than it being a swan? This makes no sense.
The suggestion that we do a "montage" type collection of representatives of all major branches of the human family is a very good idea, I think. If you have such a photo, please present it here for consideration.
Vertuvian Man is an excellent suggestion, but has been criticized as an idealized, artistic representation and that's not what we do for species on Wikipedia. We show normal healthy representative individuals in photographs of real individuals, not drawings. Supporters said that didn't matter because humans are not just one more species article. Mostly, it's odd that a drawing would be the lead picture for an existant species on Wikipedia. We use photos, normally. Some say that that shouldn't matter in this case.
Also, it doesn't have a woman. This species is sexually dimorphic, so we're supposed so show one of each like with the article Mallard or Lion.
Many argued that we should have an image that was representative of the majority of humans. Unfortunately, no single branch of the human family tree does represent the majority, so we went with another type of central value, such as ideas about producing a composite photo of a large number of people from all branches. Unfortunately, no one has yet tried replacing this photo with one of those. I'm not sure such a photo exists.
So we settled on this photo as representative of the largest branch of humans, the east Asian branch, but southeast Asian because they seem a bit closer to or including admixture of the northeast Asian branch and one of the main south Asian branches.
Also southeast asian branch is more of a common coloration. Like the article grey wolf, for example. It has pictures of black wolves and white wolves to illustrate the extremes but the lead picture wolf is gray because it's more in the center and more wolves are gray than either black or white.
More merits for this picture include showing them as peasant farmers, and most people who have ever existed have been peasant farmers. Other people said that's not true anymore. The new most common job is factory worker. But no one brought such a photo to judge against this one, so peasant farmer it still is.
Then it also shows typical signs of human activity in the background. As you go about earth, you see this pattern of settles and cultivated land with wilderness lands on the steepest slopes and highest altitudes and strips of wilderness forming boundries indicating maybe ownership differences.
But where are the buildings in the background of this picture? Having such a picture except with buildings would be better. No one has brought us one of those either.
So those are the types of photos that might win out here to replace this one. Idealized line drawings separated from their environment are not the normal way we do things here on Wikipedia. Maybe we should change our ways for this case for some reason, but we have our ways for good reasons that we've decided long ago but maybe this article is special and go with line drawings. Chrisrus (talk) 05:06, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) True, we aren't all that. But none of us are stick figures with vaguely European features and missing genitalia. Please go through the archives and read the past discussions on this topic. There are a bunch of 'em, and some of them go on and on and on . . . and the image that we ended up with doesn't please everyone but it seems to be less problematic than any alternative suggested to date. It's there because of long-standing consensus. If you hope to see that consensus change, you'd need to become familiar with the various arguments (fair warning: some of them are less than pleasant) and then present a cogent argument for a specific, workable alternative. Rivertorch's Evil Twin (talk) 05:10, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
As i said previously, I never made a suggestion towards using the pioneer plaque. I agree on you that it isn't a good photo to use. However, your "good enough" mentality towards the current issues does not, in any way, shape, or form, fix the issues that it accommodates. This is something that should be resolved, and not ignored simply because "we talked about it before". If a resolution has still not presented itself, then it obviously needs more discussion until one does. 142.165.123.7 (talk) 20:28, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Ok but we're not saying it can't be improved, only explaining why for Wikipedia reasons having to do with articles like this one about species, this picture is a pretty good one and since no one is suggesting a better on, we stay with this one. So please suggest a better one and we will use it. Chrisrus (talk) 22:14, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
To me, a suitable image would be one portraying early human cultures in Africa. One possibility would be an image of the San people, who are thought to be the world's most ancient race based upon DNA. For example:
The thing is, humans are literally the most photographed species in the world. Why in the world should someone even choose black and white drawings or stuffed puppets in museums over actual, high quality photographs? Editor abcdef (talk) 06:00, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks!
Merits of File:Bushman-people.jpg to represent the species might include:
The most recent common ancestor of these "Bushman-people.jpg" people on the one hand,
And those of all other branches of the human family tree on the other
Is thought to have lived lived longer ago than that of any other two branches.
Experts think they branched off from the rest of the tree earlier than any other branch on the family tree we know of.
Note that, it is possible that they have changed as much, or even more, in all that time, than any other branch.
However, it's also possible that they may not have changed so much.
They could still be more similar to the common ancestors of all people alive today than individuals of any other extant branch.
Bushman-people.jpg might possibly illustrate the last common ancestor of all extant people than one of any branch of the human family tree.
Second, they look like two different major branches.
Their hair is like Melanesian, Australians, Ademanese, and of course other sub-Saharans.
But faces and eyes resemble those of the northeast Asian/Amerinds branch much more than other sub-Saharans. Especially the female. They look Asian.
And also, they are neither very white nor very black. They are the bit darker but close to the sort of brown color that most people seem to be.
Counter-arguments might include:
The background of this picture doesn't illustrate the effect of the species on the ecosystem of the planet nearly as well as the picture of the peasants.
Next, these people are clearly hunter-gatherers. Have more people been farmers or hunter-gatherers?
Ok, so most people are factory workers, not farmers anymore, but most people have quite recent farmer ancestors.
And farmers are still a huge population, while hunter-gatherers have been a fraction of a percent for a very long time for most people and branches.
Few people have had a hunter-gatherer ancestor for such a very long time.
So it's hard to see hunter-gatherers as typical, ordinary people.
Surely, factory workers, or even farmers, would be more representative of humans today.
Is the total number of farmers greater than the entire hunter-gatherer population of all humans that have ever lived?
Back when we were all hunter-gatherers, the population was very small.
Agriculture highly increased total possible population, and industrialization much more so.
Thoughts?
---
(edit conflict)
The idea of using museum reproductions of prehistoric individuals to represent a species that's not extinct is pretty un-Wikipedian.
I mean, we usually use photos of live animals to in lead pictures, not stuffed ones. Unless they're extinct.
However, it might be an improvement. We are too stuck in our ways sometimes. I'd love to see the picture. It might be great! Chrisrus (talk) 06:19, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Well, I agree with you about the museum reproductions, anyway. That would be a travesty. Some relatively decent arguments were made for the current image, but I think there are literally thousands of others that would work equally well. As I see it, no humans are any more representative of their species than any other humans, so things like physical features, ancestry, clothing, and setting are actually more or less irrelevant. The principal factor that should enter into it is the quality of the photo, although the presence of multiple humans (preferably diverse vis-à-vis age, gender or other characteristics) would probably be a plus.
I do not think that change for change's sake is a desirable outcome here—there should be a compelling reason articulated before seriously considering such a thing—and I shudder at the thought of another onslaught of thinly-veiled racist objections to another new image. However, I'm always happy to look at pictures . RivertorchFIREWATER07:41, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
The posting of thinly-veiled racist objections to an image should be completely irrelevant to whether it is suitable for the subject matter. To my mind, the subjects should be scantily clad to show the physical form (as all other such images show the animal naked), include both a male and female (for balance), and provide some relevant and useful information beyond just presenting an appearance. The current image doesn't quite satisfy these. Praemonitus (talk) 15:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Please stop using the word "race". We are talking about branches on the human family tree. The word "race" is problematic. Discussing the facts about the major human clades, the major branches of the species, is not "racism". Not using the term "race" keeps things WP:Civil. Chrisrus (talk) 15:59, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
@Chrisrus: Civility is a wonderful thing, but avoidance of racism is infinitely more wonderful. @Praemonitus: racist objections may be irrelevant to the suitability, but when they're used as an argument for changing an image or for picking another one (as they have been in the past), they need to be acknowledged for what they are. RivertorchFIREWATER20:12, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
You say you agree with me that it would be a "travesty" to use a photo of a reconstruction of early humans, but I don't think it would be. I just think it would be hightly unorthodox for a species article to do so, but it might be the best choice anyway. We could break with tradition and use a reconstruction of what humans would have been like before they branched out into the variety that we see today.
Some sub-branches are more representative of more main branches than others. For example, German's one-toothed moss mouse wouldn't be a good example of such animals as one with standard dentition.
It's not quite clear what type of photo you're thinking about. It sounds like you might favor using the external anatomy photo (Anterior_view_of_human_female_and_male,_with_labels_2.png) as the main lead photo. Is that or something like that what you're thinking about? Chrisrus (talk) 16:24, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
The current photo is completely fine. The idea of using San people to represent paleolithic humans is very problematic. So is the idea of using a reconstruction. We need a simple picture that represents modern humans. 16:46, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, it is, but another might be better.
What does the world "problematic" mean your post? What problems would be caused by either using the picture of the San people to represent early humans, or using of a reconstruction of early humans? Chrisrus (talk) 17:44, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
In all of the many discussions about the picture, noone has yet proposed another picture that is obviously better than this one. San people are not premodern and their lifestyle is not paleolithic, and it is a harmful stereotype to describe them as such. A reconstruction is a form of fiction, which is utterly unnecessary given that there are 7 billion extant specimens of this particular species which is the best studied and documented of all animal species on this planet - making using a fictive reconstruction of a particular historical state of this species unnecessary.·maunus · snunɐɯ·18:04, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
That's fine then. But according to the San people article:
"Mitochondrial DNA studies also provide evidence that the San carry high frequencies of the earliest haplogroup branches in the human mitochondrial DNA tree. This DNA is inherited only from one's mother. The most divergent (oldest) mitochondrial haplogroup, L0d, has been identified at its highest frequencies in the southern African San groups."
Maunus mentions the San people. However, since he is ignorant of the literature, he doesn't know that 25% Fst means the San people don't exist. 217.144.146.41 (talk) 21:48, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
I also agree with the poster above that says we should not use the word race and should use the phrase "branch of the human family tree". 217.144.146.41 (talk) 21:52, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
you all are human beings you live on earth , you have to understand it , black - white- purple these changes are due to the location where you live nothing else , rich- poor, these differences are based on your creativity , but don't forget you all are human beings who should have the same human rights everywhere on earth.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.194.231.144 (talk) 00:51, 02 March 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Original creator of this topic here, I think the newly proposed picture is a good replacement. It's higher resolution alone definitely makes it superior to the current one. Don't know about anyone else, but i'm all for using this picture here. If there's no direct arguments to its quality or usage, then i think it should be edited in as the new picture. 142.165.123.7 (talk) 07:59, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
Oppose – Current picture is more representative of a "typical specimen" of our species today: Asian, rural, clothed, in a mix of natural and human-curated environment. This article is about humans in the most general sense, not about "current humans that look the closest to original humans from 150'000 years ago". A collage of diverse humans would be fine from a neutrality standpoint but might look less elegant. — JFGtalk08:43, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
Oppose I don't like the current picture [the height difference between male and female is not typical of people in adequately nourished societies] but the alternatives proposed are even worse. IMO, since we all know what we look like and I doubt that anyone on the other side of the galaxy is reading this, maybe we shouldn't even have a picture. And btw, there are no 'branches of the human family tree', there is a smooth gradation of physical features from Inuit to indigenous Australians through the people between. The 'race' delusion arose from dislocation of people (e.g. due to slavery) that brought dissimilar people together. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:54, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
Oppose. Change for change's sake much? I believe we should stick with the current image, in the absence of a compelling reason to the contrary. The only rationale I see being offered here is the higher resolution, but the resolution of the current image is perfectly adequate for its context. RivertorchFIREWATER18:34, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
Oppose – This is an article about modern humans and the similarity of the appearance of prehistoric humans to the San people is not a valid reason for its addition. Editor abcdef (talk) 06:57, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Paved path on Longevity Hill in Summer Palace, Beijing
Paved path on Longevity Hill in Summer Palace, Beijing—proposed lead picture
Akha cropped hires—present lead picture
I propose that we us a cropped version of Paved path on Longevity Hill in Summer Palace, Beijing as the lead picture because: The couple in the picture are East Asian (Chinese to be exact), so they are more representative of typical humans; they are closer to the median age; they live in an urban area, which most humans do; the height difference between the male and the female is closer to the median one; humans effect on their environment is more clearly shown; and the image is of higher resolution. —MartinZ02 (talk) 01:15, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Oppose. This image is inferior in several ways. First, it's too busy and its composition is inferior. There are a bunch of humans in the background, and they're all wearing brighter clothes than the couple in the foreground, which is distracting. Worse, the man in the striped shirt appears to be sprouting from the head of the woman in the foreground. This effect is more pronounced when the image is cropped. Second, there's something strange about the highlights and color in certain discrete places. This is especially noticeable in the hair of the man in the foreground, and I'm unable correct it fully using basic image-editing tools. Third, the lenses of the woman's glasses have a distracting reflection, obscuring her right eye and rendering her left eye bright green. Fourth, although the image has a higher resolution (i.e., more pixels), it looks less clear than the current image when rendered at the same size. Finally, I don't believe in "typical humans"; we're all individuals, and none of us is any more typical of our species than anyone else, except in some limited and unimportant ways. Overall, I'd say there's no net improvement. RivertorchFIREWATER07:18, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
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There is an overall consensus against the merge.Primarily, the topics-proposed to be merged have certain differences(issues of taxonomic focus etc.) and arguments that the overlap≠duplication is due to near-similar angles of treatment for two articles that has been only broadly construed as one in WP history seems rational.Many have supported creating further specialized sub-pages and selective pruning of each article's redundant pieces rather than outright merges.Further, many have also questioned the timing of the merge discussion esp. when it had been opened by the same person who nominated the article for deletion which subsequently resulted in a near WP:SNOW keep. Winged Blades Godric06:56, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
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Premature close
This discussion was prematurely closed before more editors could become involved.
I propose that "Homo sapiens" be merged into this article per WP:CFORK, which states: "Content forks that are created unintentionally result in redundant or conflicting articles and are to be avoided [emphasis added]." Then there's the fact that the two articles literally covers the same subject, as evidenced by the first sentence at the top of this article—"This article is about humans as a species [emphasis added]."—as well as a few other parts of the article, such as the infobox, with seems to indicate that it's about Homo sapiens. Size wont be a problem either, because all the content in "Homo sapiens" is already covered by "Human". —MartinZ02 (talk) 06:31, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Support Having looked at the article I agree that it is superfluous. It may be possible to write an article specifically about the taxonomic category (for example a review of the earliest uses of the category and detailed discussions about subspecies etc.), without writing about other aspects of human existence, but that is not what the article Homo sapiens currently does.·maunus · snunɐɯ·08:02, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Comment: Since Homo sapiens has survived two AfDs and was left in place after a similar discussion on its talk page less than two years ago, this discussion should run long enough for that article's watchers to notice and join in. I'm neutral at this point (still reviewing things) but have some early concerns about merging the content gracefully. RivertorchFIREWATER18:23, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Added: There is considerable overlap, and it looks as if a merge could be accomplished without much trouble. However, I think a fair amount of overlap is inevitable between any two such articles. A better solution than merging might be to trim some of the overlap from Homo sapiens and expand it to include more specifically taxonomic information, if that's feasible. I don't think there's any content there that would particularly improve this article. If the other article really is superfluous, another AfD might be in order down the road, but this merge proposal seems to be functioning almost like another AfD already. Weak oppose. RivertorchFIREWATER08:46, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Support I don't really see why it exists. I suppose it could be turned into an extended article about the use of that particular taxon, like Dingo (taxon), but the referent as it stands seems to be the same as this one. We can't have too articles for one referent. If it's going to be an article about a taxon, I wouldn't necessarily support. But it's not; it's about humans. Chrisrus (talk) 20:51, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
What the hell...??? There was an AFD just that closed a mere FIVE days earlier, with somewhat larger participation, that showed overwhelming support for keeping Homo sapiens. Pushing through this merge within a single day, quite clearly without adequate notification, opened and closed by someone who was outvoted in that AfD and is now immediately trying again to get their way, is very much out of line. I dislike mass pings, but I am herewith asking for the participants of that AfD to drop in and comment. I believe this merge should be overturned pronto.
Comment - Since there was just a deletion discussion, which is better publicized than a merge discussion, it would appear that this merge was done as an end run around the deletion discussion, and should be taken to Merge Review or Deletion review, the latter to uphold that the non-deletion was consensus. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:38, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
I really don't like the result of the merge. Aside from the History section which covers evolution, everything in the Human article is about modern humans. We also have Homo sapiens sapiens as a redirect to Anatomically modern human, and that article is mostly about evolution (and then there's human evolution, Archaic human admixture with modern humans, and a bunch of other articles on fine-grained details about the origin of humans). It doesn't make any sense to have Homo sapiens pointing here and Homo sapiens sapiens pointing somewhere else when the bulk of this article is about the narrower taxonomic concept (i.e. modern humans, H. sapiens sapiens with genetic contributions from other subspecies). If anything, Homo sapiens sapiens should be retargeted here, and perhaps a new target for Homo sapiens should be found (or it should be restored as an article). Plantdrew (talk) 17:52, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Oppose. I have reopened this discussion in order to receive wider input from editors. This merge discussion should be looked at by an administrator, so I intend to log it at the noticeboard (AN) after lunch. In my humble opinion, this discussion should be procedurally closed. I could be wrong about that; however, no other page should be merged into this page this page should not be merged anywhere for reasons given in previous discussions. This article is already long and unwieldy for our readers. If anything, we should be looking for ways to shorten this article by making more spin-off articles from notable parts of this article. Homo sapiens is a just such a spin-off article and is about a notable part of being human, i.e., it describes one species of human as opposed to Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo rhodesiensis and others – all in the genus Homo, and all considered to be "human". Paine Ellsworthu/c18:29, 19 January 2017 (UTC) and 01:45, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
We close based on arguments not procedure, please make an argument to support your !vote. The proposal is not about merging this page anywhere, but about merging another page into this one.·maunus · snunɐɯ·10:26, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
With respect, maunus, I said, "...this page should not be merged anywhere...", so whether this page is merged into another page or vice versa is a moot point. No merge should take place. I hope I've made that clear. Let me also repeat, "...this page should not be merged anywhere for reasons given in previous discussions." Since readers of this merge discussion will hopefully read previous discussions on the matter, in my humble opinion that is argument enough. I have added more detail to my oppose rationale above. Paine Ellsworthu/c19:18, 25 January 2017 (UTC) and 01:45, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
Let me be more specific... this article is long enough already. I consider Homo sapiens to be a spin-off notable article that covers one of several aspects of Human beings, specifically, one of the human species. To merge any article into this one would make this article even more unwieldy for our readers. If anything, we should look at this article and find other notable subjects that could be spun off into their own articles. Paine Ellsworthu/c19:31, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
Comment: FWIW - yes - agree with many of the comments above supporting overturning the merge asap - at least until there's an appropriate discussion - and/or WP:CONSENSUS - should mention that another related article may be Behavioral modernity - in any case - hope this helps in some way - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 19:00, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
@MartinZ02: Thank you for your question - as before, I agree with comments noted above that further discussion may be indicated before the Homo sapiens article is merged with the Human (or some related) article - for my part at the moment - seems the Homo sapiens article may be sufficiently different from an article on Human (more related to Homo sapiens sapiens and Behavioral modernity perhaps?) that a merge may not be indicated - however - I would welcome further comments from other editors on the issue - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 21:08, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
So in other words you are opposing the timing of the closure but not the proposal. You should change your !vote to make that clear.·maunus · snunɐɯ·10:28, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
@Maunus: Done - I would prefer more discussion before closing - also - at the moment, I'm opposed to the merging of the Homo sapiens article with the Human article => seems the Homo sapiens article may be sufficiently different from the Human article that a merge (with the Human article) may not be indicated at this time - after all, the Human article seems more related to Homo sapiens sapiens and Behavioral modernity imo atm than the Homo sapiens article - iac - hope this helps clarify my present thinking on the issue - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 15:22, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Comment There are several different issues being raised here. I agree with Plantdrew that some of the other articles are muddled as to their intended topic – a generic problem in an encyclopedia where anyone can create articles, regardless of what other articles exist, and also of using English names with vague application instead of scientific names with precise application. But none of this invalidates the point that we don't need multiple articles on the same taxon, and that merges are needed. In terms of taxa, there should be separate articles on Homo, its species, including Homo sapiens, and some subspecies, including Homo sapiens sapiens. "Human" is hopelessly ambiguous between all of these and would be best as a set index article. Since I doubt there's a consensus for that move, it's a matter of arbitrarily choosing one taxon as the one called "human". Peter coxhead (talk) 20:32, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Expand Homo sapiens I agree that the article is not a slam-dunk to keep in its current state, but it occupies a crucial position that should be enlarged upon. There is a need for a hub article with a taxonomic focus that summarizes and directs to the various well-developed pages on subspecies (or species, depending on how you swing) (Homo heidelbergensis, Homo idaltu, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo antecessor). This task is at this time performed partly by Anatomically modern human, a term that strictly only refers to H. s. idaltu and H. s. sapiens. Homo sapiens would be a much more suitable location. It currently does the job partially, I suggest letting it do all of it. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 09:47, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
But this article is not about all species called "human" but only about "Homo sapiens" - this is because "Human" is the COMMONNAME for Homo sapiens and the PRIMARYTOPIC for the title "human" is Homo sapiens.·maunus · snunɐɯ·10:29, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
@Maunus: what's your evidence for this assertion? "Human" is also used for the genus Homo: search for ""the first humans" for example, and you'll find it used for other species in the genus by some very reliable sources. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
It should be a simple enough statement for anyone to accept without empirical evidence that the vast majority of times when people speak or write about humans, they are referring to the only extant species of the genus Homo to which we all belong, and not to the scientifically more accurate but much less used and useful meaning of the term.·maunus · snunɐɯ·11:29, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Sure, but that's only one part of our titling policy. The issue is WP:PRECISE: does "human" unambiguously define the topical scope of the article? The answer that should be simple enough for anyone to accept, with plenty of empirical evidence, is "no". Peter coxhead (talk) 12:29, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
To the extent it doesn't, we have disambiguation, that's what disambiguation is for. The term human, like most terms, can certainly take different meanings, for example, arguably neanderthals were human, but the default meaning is homo sapien.01:42, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Not really, most people usually think about Homo sapiens when they hear the word human, while Homo sapiens sapiens are usually called modern human. —MartinZ02 (talk) 10:36, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
@MartinZ02: I believe that in ordinary usage, "human" usually means "modern human"; you don't. But we don't (or shouldn't) choose article titles on the basis of your beliefs or mine, so the question remains: what's the evidence in reliable sources? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:15, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Merriam‐Webster defines human as "a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens)".[1]
And the OED online has "Zoology: of or belonging to the genus Homo. When the Science Museum website writes here "Most believe that modern humans evolved in Africa, and gradually replaced all the other ancient humans" it's clear that they don't equate "human" to Homo sapiens. If we are writing about humans as a taxon, which the presence of the taxobox in the article strongly implies, then it's what reliable scientific sources say that matters. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:34, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Merge Homo sapiens here. Wikipedia has very, very few separate articles on terms like 'homo sapien', and there's no good reason in this case, a homo sapien and a human are the same thing, it's a duplication.GliderMaven (talk) 01:36, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Oppose. As a few have mentioned, the Human article is too long. Why is there a page+ section on Psychology? (Do you have a 'psychology' section for squid? Then why make a spurious argument that 'human' is a species-like description?) Psychology is a worthy and long subject of its own, and indeed the reader should be directed to those articles without a superficial gloss. That gloss could be duplicated 20 times here, for a number of other human-related topics. As it is it looks more like a vanity project or a sop to those bothersome "soft sciences" people (btw: that is hopefully understood as hyperbole). My point being that this article has by its very nature a massive manifold domain, and needs artful directions to separate topic-specific articles. Flat feet? Go here. Beads? Try History of art. You can't put enough here without burdening the reader inordinately. You need specialization into separate pages. In my view, I see the History section as being quite a lot of duplication. Yet the supporters for the merge are using duplication as a reason to merge. I would see Homo sapiens as a place to hang a lot of the details that here would only add to the 'overwhelm'. You want to merge? I want to split! (Oh, and I greatly dislike wiki-maneuvers - those are not found under Art) Shenme (talk) 06:15, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
Oppose – Both articles are very long, so a merge would be awkard, crying out for a split. Further specialized sub-pages may yet be created. The concerns of content duplication can be addressed by selective pruning of each article's redundant pieces. Finally, this merge proposal right after the AfD conclusion can be deemed disruptive at best, sneaky at worst. — JFGtalk20:36, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
Merging wouldn't increase the size of "Human", so it wouldn't be awkward at all. If you want to have spin off articles, then there are proper ways of doing it (e.g., creating a "Human history" article, a "Human biology" article, etc.). Keeping the status quo makes about as much sense as having a "Pan troglodytes" article that's separate from "Common chimpanzee", or having a "Donald J. Trump" article that's separate from "Donald Trump" (It doesn't make sense, and it's incredibly awkward.). —MartinZ (talk) 21:51, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
The article on the "common chimp" is 57,272 bytes long. If and when it gets to be 165,393 bytes long like the "human" article, then maybe I or someone else will write a spinoff article about Pan troglodytes and that species' scientific details. Editors who work hard searching for and writing spinoff articles so that long articles can be shortened and more easily read by our readers might be discouraged when other editors advertise their hard work as "just a fork". Paine Ellsworthput'r there00:22, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
Absolutely. The problem here is, as others have said, that there's no coherent overall structure to the set of articles. Sorting this out, and creating a better organization, would be much more than "just a few forks". Peter coxhead (talk) 13:04, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
Confusion illustrated
The current opening sentence, Modern humans (Homo sapiens, primarily ssp. Homo sapiens sapiens) are the only extant members ... illustrates nicely the lack of coherence in the terms currently used in article titles. If "modern humans" are Homo sapiens, then most subspecies are extinct and one is extant. If "modern humans" are Homo sapiens sapiens then they are a extant taxon. What exactly does "primarily" mean here? Peter coxhead (talk) 20:41, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
@Paine Ellsworth: yes, I agree that "primarily" implies something must be "secondarily", and this is one of the things I find confusing. I do think the opening sentence needs to be clarified. How about "Modern humans (Homo sapiens) are the only extant species ...", leaving out the issue of extinct subspecies in the opening sentence, because this needs discussion and qualification. However, it's still not clear to me what this article is about. It's not about Homo sapiens per se because that's the article Homo sapiens, nor about Homo sapiens sapiens, because that's the article Anatomically modern human – or am I wrong?
I'd like to make clear my stated confusion isn't a rhetorical device to make a point. I really don't understand what these different articles are supposed to be about and why some material is in one and some in another. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:35, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
To editor Peter coxhead: Forgive me for a late response – I had surgery last week and am presently feeling better. It seems obvious that these related articles need work. This article should cover all things "human", while articles like Homo sapiens, Anatomically modern human, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and other more specific titles should be about the specific species or subspecies. I don't think that's the case at present; however, I also don't think that the solution is to merge specific-subject articles into this long general one. Peter, I consider you far more expert than I am in all this, so I agree to any lead changes you deem necessary. Paine Ellsworthput'r there01:22, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
To editor Paine Ellsworth: hope you continue to feel better. I'm not usually backward in making bold edits, but I really don't feel able to revise the opening since I don't understand what the consensus is over the topic of this article. Is it about all subspecies of the species Homo sapiens, or about Homo sapiens sapiens, or about some other group? How does it relate to other related articles? Unless that's clear, the opening can't be clear. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:59, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
Thank you Peter! I understand your misgivings, and believe me, you are not alone. This article should be about "all things human", and when I read it, it essentially is about just that. I think I would like to see a little more in the language section about how after it was found that several pre-human primates used tools, and even chimps today will fashion a tool to retrieve and eat termites, after that "only-human" trait was dashed to pieces, language was thought to be "the last great bastion of humanity". And how that now we can teach chimps and gorillas sign language and other types of non-chimp/gorilla forms of communication, so even the language trait, while still more advanced in humans with the advent of writing, is no longer considered "only-human". Stuff like that. It can be a difficult, somewhat awe-inspiring, even humbling experience to work to improve this article. There have already been a lot of spin-off articles written, which just adds to the complexity of article maintenance and improvement. Some things in the lead could be transferred to the History section, and we might even consider separating that section into "Prehistory" and "History" sections with a demarcation point at the advent of agriculture 10K years ago and a gray area up to the invention of writing at least 5K years ago, and so on. I'm beginning to ramble, so I probably should stop now. Good hunting! Paine Ellsworthput'r there14:25, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
References
^"human". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved January 21, 2017.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose that “Homo sapiens” be merged into this article per WP:CFORK, which states: “Content forks that are created unintentionally result in redundant or conflicting articles and are to be avoided [emphasis added].” Then there's the fact that the two articles literally covers the same subject, as evidenced by the first sentence at the top of this article—“This article is about humans as a species [emphasis added].”—as well as a few other parts of the article, such as the infobox, with seems to indicate that it’s about Homo sapiens. Size won’t be a problem either, because all the content in “Homo sapiens” is already covered by this article. MartinZ (talk) 13:38, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
...I really wonder what the OP is thinking is a) their mission on WP and b) the short-term memory expected of editors. The previous RFC on this very topic was closed a mere TEN days ago, in the negative. Oh yes, and that followed on an AfD discussion that also came out strongly against the notion. This continued bludgeoning of the same point is starting to become disruptive. I shall be asking for a procedural close. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:54, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
Strongest possible support the articles are about exactly the same thing, simply using different words to identify a species doesn't make it a different species, everything you can say about 'homo sapiens' applies to 'humans' too and vice versa. They're different names, but not different things. The subject is the same.GliderMaven (talk) 18:39, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
On second thoughts, they're not precisely the same thing, but homo sapien is a strict subset of human, so it doesn't matter at all if you're merging into this article. There could be quite reasonable arguments against merging to home sapien, but that's not what's been proposed.GliderMaven (talk) 18:50, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Lead image
Guys, exactly how did the lead image come about? I personally think this illustraion on the Pioneer plaque would be better:
"Through history human populations have universally become taller"
I don't think that's the case -- the transition from hunter-gatherers to intense agriculturalists with a diet mainly of grain often involved a decrease of height. I'm not sure that there's been a widespread increasing height trend until the last few centuries... AnonMoos (talk) 01:56, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
If it's referring to a timescale of millions of years, then that needs to be clarified. If it's referring to a timescale of thousands or tens of thousands of years, then I don't think it's true. AnonMoos (talk) 15:53, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
Here's a link to an accessible version on ResearchGate. Bit of a read; I don't have the time to delve in right now. At least it looks well organized :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:08, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
"Hominina tribe" v. "Homo genus"
Why does the lede mention the "tribe" level of taxonomy? It is barely mentioned in Taxonomic rank. It would be more relevant to say "only extant species in the genus Homo", in my opinion. Power~enwiki (talk) 04:44, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
First instance of 'Tribe' links to incorrect page.
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The article uses 'they' quiet a lot when referring to humans. I'm not sure if this is the proper pronouns to use for such an article and would like to put it for discussion. Surely it should be using "we" and using the pronouns of humans as it is only humans who are going to be reading this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bbx118 (talk • contribs) 23:12, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
"Oldest Homo sapiens bones ever found shake foundations of the human story. Idea that modern humans evolved in East Africa 200,000 years ago challenged by extraordinary discovery of 300,000-year-old remains in Moroccan mine."[1][2][3][4][5] NOTE: posted by => Rævhuld (talk | contribs) 13:58, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
As has been mentioned on other pages ...still great debate on dates and even if its Homo sapiens remains.....still very early stage. We should wait for the peer revivews that will be forth coming soon. Sounds promising...but as the sources below mention....still ongoing and debatable. --Moxy (talk) 22:36, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
BRIEF Followup - following posts seem particularly relevant to the present discussion (see copy below) - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:45, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
I have removed "... and may have originated about 300,000 years ago, based on fossil remain evidence found in West Africa[1][2] ..." as there is a big debate on dates let alone if they are Homo sapien remains. Lets not jump on this 2 fast......wait for peer views--Moxy (talk) 20:05, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
@Moxy: Thank you for your comments - and noting text/refs[1][2] - *entirely* agree - no problem whatsoever - Thanks again - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 22:08, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Before I logged in, I was musing about this. On the one hand, it probably would be better to wait. On the other, I wonder if it would be feasible to add a very brief, tentative mention, if only to ward off attempts to prematurely add longer, less tentative mentions. RivertorchFIREWATER05:41, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
If it is good enough for Nature, it should be good enough for us. I agree though that we should have no more than a couple of sentences emphasising that these are early results that have yet to receive scientific consensus. Are they really H. Sapiens Sapiens or another precursor?--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:31, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Somewhat related - evidence suggests that Homo sapiens may have migrated from Africa as early as 270,000 years ago, much earlier than the 70,000 years ago thought previously[1][2] - Comments Welcome - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 20:08, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Request to change Lahnda to Punjabi under "Most widely spoken native languages."
Considering that Lahnda or Western Punjabi (essentially a grouping of all Punjabi dialects spoken in West Punjab) is mutually intelligible from the Eastern Punjabi dialects of Eastern Punjab, and that all dialects come under the Punjabi language family, it would be far more appropriate to to replace Lahnda with just Punjabi. Also Punjabi speakers (all dialects included) outnumber Lahnda speakers, obviously, so there's that as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tejs4224 (talk • contribs) 23:33, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
This edit request to Human has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
Please change Lahnda to Punjabi under "Most widely spoken native languages."
Explanation:
Considering that Lahnda or Western Punjabi (essentially a grouping of all Punjabi dialects spoken in West Punjab) is mutually intelligible from the Eastern Punjabi dialects of Eastern Punjab, and that all dialects come under the Punjabi language family, it would be far more appropriate to to replace Lahnda with just Punjabi. Also Punjabi speakers (all dialects included) outnumber Lahnda speakers, obviously, so there's that as well. Tejs4224 (talk) 01:23, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
According to the current version of the source cited at Swaziland (the CIA Factbook), Swaziland is now in fourth-from-last place. This is a 2016 estimate. The PDF from the source cited in Human is from a different source, the United Nations Human Development Report, and has data from 2004 (see page 365). I may just be missing it, but I have been unable to find the relevant data in the latest Human Development Report. Anyone else want to look for it or should we go with the Factbook data or what? RivertorchFIREWATER03:50, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
Trade...
@Ageispolis11: Trade is a volutary exchange of services and goods. As soon as it's involuntary, it's called theft (in the case of goods) or slavery/indentured labor (in the case of services). Let's not mix those up. Also this article is not a WP:SOAPBOX. Kleuske (talk) 20:03, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
Also easter eggs like [[Historical materialism|historical specificity]] are misleading. Historical materialism is a disticly marxist (i.e. political) term while "historical specificity" is a eufemism. Kleuske (talk) 20:10, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
@Kleuske:My foremost contestation of this charge of 'soap boxing' is that trade and economics were historically the product of Political Economy. This was a field of economics emerging from the French Physiocrats (see Physiocracy) in the 18th century. Within this tradition are the well established political economists of Adam Smith and David Riccardo. The economics of trade and distribution, as you rightly identified, were studied from the vantage of this field. I would like you to clarify why this is soapboxing, with at least some reference to academic analysis of your own which makes you qualified to simply remove the entirety of my edit on Political economy and the history of trade as social economics. I teach this material to students at a university level at a global institution, so it is somewhat offensive that you claim this is merely an opinion.
To state my point very clearly: it is clear that the dichotomy between 'trade' and 'theft' is a false one, and there is a range of academic discussions which I can cite if you require further evidence of this claim. For just one example [1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ageispolis11 (talk • contribs) 20:23, 06 September 2007 (UTC)
References
^Gallagher, John, and Ronald Robinson. "The imperialism of free trade." The Economic History Review 6, no. 1 (1953): 1-15.
@Ageispolis11: The WP:SOAPBOXING refers to the insertion of blatantly political POV's into an article, using easter eggs to do so. Trade existed long before anyone thought of political economy, physiocracy or even economy in general, hence trade simply cannot be the product of "political economy". That's ludicrous. If you teach this subject (and I'll take your word for it), you should be well aware of that. The fact that trade is "contingent on existing systems of social organization", is kicking in an open door. Moreover "systems of social organization" have existed as long as humanity does, possibly longer, since chimpanzees also have a "system of social organization", as do other social animals (wolves, dolphins, etc). The claim that this produces "a range of systemic inequalities, which also effect the life capabilities" is simply irrelevant, here (WP:UNDUE). The use of said easter eggs to (apparently) promote a favored economic theory elevates this to the level of WP:SOAPBOX.
Also, I strongly suspect you are the economist mentioned in your addition to this article, and your explanation above does nothing to alleviate that.Kleuske (talk) 12:05, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Both of you please stop edit warring. @Ageispolis11: it is your responsibility to get consensus for your edits before reinserting them. RivertorchFIREWATER 04:20, 7 September 2017 (UT
@Rivertorch: I would just like to clarify something here, with due respect. First, I am *not* the academic in the article, in fact, this article is from the 1950s, further, my link on human capabilities is linked with Amartya Sen's work on development and its effects emanating form mass production (he is a very famous Cambridge academic who you could easily find information on). The core contention, which is relevant to a page that specifies that its subject is on humans, is that trade and economics cannot be presented without an explanation of mass production. I suggest that this is a historical phenomena, within the anthropocene, which amounts to outcomes within human communities. Having said that, I believe in particular that the fact that the entry suggests that trade is (supposedly by 'definition') a voluntary act, completely absolves the historic component of surplus economies emergent from mass production. Further, you make a particular point about political economy and the pre-existence of economy before the field's existence. While this is broadly correct, the era of 'mass production' which the entry addresses, followed closely with the development of political economy as a field of thought. Political economy is a reputable field of trade and economic commentary that a range of global experts contribute to! I only mention this point due to the accusation that it is 'soapboxing' to claim that trade is *not* a voluntary act, when in fact the study of trade and economy follows closely with the emergence of a human system of exchange inequity in the era of mass production. I hold firmly that any entry that identifies economy and trade as its core subject should not attempt to absolve the anthropocentric components of human economy as they emerged in the era of mass production. I feel disappointed that I have been accused of promoting my own work (supposedly by citing a very famous article from the 1950s...), when I am attempting to produce a less political entry that identifies the *human* qualities of trade and economy. I would like to here your thoughts on my comments, as I have a strong desire to participate democratically in the wikipedia community, albeit, with academic expertise. All the best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ageispolis11 (talk • contribs) 17:34, 07 September 2017 (UTC)
My comment was procedural. I have no opinion on this question of content. Please sign any posts you make to a talk page by adding four consecutive tildes (~~~~). RivertorchFIREWATER15:35, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 4 October 2017
This edit request to Human has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
I want to change the photo for humans to a photo of me (a human male) and my friend Lisa (a human female) from college and if you let me do this I will donate $30 to Wikipedia EVERY YEAR for perpetuity. Geoffreyasmus (talk) 18:08, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
Make a case for how using your specific photos is an improvement to the article here on the talk page and wait for other editors to agree/disagree. You may also want to add new comments below instead of editing yours. Cannolis (talk) 19:03, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
It has been shown by recent discoveries that modern(ish) humans existed 300,000 years ago, updating the previous estimate of 200,000 years ago. This is due to finding 300,000 year old Homo Sapien bones matching those of modern people, in a mine in Morocco. The findings are (for now at least) not universally accepted to be conclusive evidence however, as the brain-case is a slightly different shape and therefore this is a early type of modern human, not exactly as we are now.
It has been nearly 10 years since this level one vital article has been evaluated for quality. Its contents have naturally been through extensive modification since that evaluation and it should be reassessed.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gireen (talk • contribs) 23 May 2017 (UTC)
Image
The lead image seems rather unsatisfactory, someone has put a little note saying not to change it 'because it has been discussed at length', however it seems to have been chosen by two or three editors as 'better' than the line drawing of Americans that NASA stuck on the Voyager probe. I feel something better could be used.
My issue is that it has no children in it. A picture of two elderly Chinese rural farmers is hardly representative of a significant proportion of the human population. So we should try to find a picture of a representative (preferably non white) family, in either a modern or traditional setting. It should have children and adults in it. I have put some images below, but I am not proposing this based on that being all that’s available. Feel free to find something better. If nothing better than what we have at the moment is available that is also fine. Dysklyver15:57, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
Chinese Family in modern habitat. A (man + woman + boy + girl)
Chinese Family in modern habitat. B (man + woman + boy + girl)
White Family in modern habitat. (man + woman + boy + girl)
African Family in modern habitat. (man + woman + boy + girl)
Group of indigenous pacific islanders in traditional habitat. (elderly man + woman + elderly woman + boy + girl)
I don't think any of them would be a net improvement on the current image. Some of them look like orange juice ads. One depicts someone standing outside in winter with bare legs, which is atypical behavior for humans. The others are better thematically but have serious issues related to factors such as composition and lighting that make them problematic as images. These are constructive suggestions, however, so thank you. (You're downplaying the scope of discussion that led to the status quo, by the way. It was exhaustive—and exhausting!—and repetitive, and over the years it has involved way more than two or three editors.) RivertorchFIREWATER16:33, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
I will clarify, the images are probably not suitable, they are simply illustrative of the general idea. I might have missed something, but was under the impression this: Talk:Human/Image is the archived discussion. The outcome of which is far from perfect, although probably better than the line drawing to begin with. Dysklyver20:30, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
Discussion of the image has involved multiple threads. These recur with surprising frequency. (If you have lots of time, take a look through the archives.) Flyer22 Reborn is correct, though. Articles on species don't usually depict juveniles in their lead images. I'm sure some do, but it's not typical or necessary. RivertorchFIREWATER16:08, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
None of the proposed pictures are more representative of humanity than the existing picture, and they are all graphically inferior. The existing picture is the outcome of many discussions involving many editors. You will need a very good photo and an equally good argument for it to be worth restarting this discussion.·maunus · snunɐɯ·16:19, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
Well thanks for the replies. I don't think any of the images I linked are better than the existing lead image, although I do think it could be improved upon. I will consolidate all the threads discussing the image into an archive template when I have the time, and will possibly (if ever) revisit this if anyone ever uploads a 'great image' that matches what I am thinking of. Dysklyver16:38, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
German Wikipedia uses a picture of Carl Linnaeus, because he is the lectotype of the human species, so, in a sense, Linnaeus is more representative for the human race than any other human. The German discussion was equally long, equally recurring, and equally exhausting, but since they have begun using Linnaeus, all new discussions end quickly. To me, the German solution seems to be a great measure to not misrepresent any race, gender, age, or socio-cultural situation in the opening picture. --2001:16B8:453A:9500:F171:63A7:97E1:1F8 (talk) 10:33, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
I didn't know he lectotype of the human species... I can understand the logic, but we don't have a modern high-res color photograph of him, so I am doubtful that it would work well for us here, I am still holding out for a small group. btw I love where it says: " Linnaeus' remains comprise the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens, following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen he is known to have examined when writing the species description was himself. " - but this really is an example of a man only (in keeping with his time period), and the entire point is that although we have a man + women, and it would be preferable to also have boy + girl, and maybe a small group to show how humans normally form 'family groups' of a number of individuals and this is the 'normal' state of living, it is more representative, but of course it is impossible to include every single variation of humanity so whatever we have is not going to be satisfying everyone. (unless we use javascript to cycle through images of every ethnic group in continuous rotation of course). Dysklyver14:11, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
Also Linnaeus divided humans into 5 species because he was a few hundred years before the race issue, its not clear for certain, but he almost certainly considered his description of himself to be that of Europæus albus rather than the other classifications of humans he used: Americanus rubescens, Asiaticus fuscus, Africanus Niger, and "monstrosus", which he based on descriptions and/or examinations of other humans that were clearly different to himself. Indeed if Linnaeus's work was taken as accurate today, we would have lectotype's for each main race, and a whole basket of unclassified pygmy people, Polynesians, south Americans and other people not known or considered 'savages' in the 1700's.. Dysklyver14:22, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
Carolus Linneaus, real name Carl Linné, was an asshole. As Bill Bryson wrote, "Rarely has a man been more comfortable with his own greatness. He spent much of his leisure time penning long and flattering portraits of himself, declaring that there has never "been a greater botanist or zoologist," and that his system of classification was "the greatest achievement in the realm of science." Modestly he suggested that his gravestone should bear the inscription Princeps Botanicorum, "Prince of Botanists." It was never wise to question his generous self-assessments. Those who did so were apt to find they had weeds named after them." Leaving his body to science in order that it would become the type specimen for H.Sapiens was to be his final act of egotism. Unfortunately for him, if I remember correctly, his bones had been deformed by a disease when he was alive and his skeleton was deemed unsuitable. I expect his mortal remains would swell once more with pride to find that his image was being considered for the infobox. nagualdesign20:27, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
Re: "A picture of two elderly Chinese rural farmers is hardly representative of a significant proportion of the human population."
It obviously doesn't represent everybody, since not everybody is elderly, Chinese and/or a farmer, but you have to admit that elderly Chinese farmers do indeed represent a significant proportion of the human population. There are almost 1.4 billion Chinese people, so an 'average' human is arguably Chinese. There are also 1.3 billion people in India, so they might also arguably represent the 'average' human. None of the alternative images above are any improvement on the current image, in my opinion. nagualdesign20:01, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
We started with the [Pioneer plaque]], it was rejected for being A* Lacking in detail B* Overly American C* Lacking in content and context. It was decided several years ago that a color photograph was a better idea. The current lead photo was selected as the best that anyone could find at the time. Dysklyver09:49, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
Well, at least it has some historical significance. They're not really overtly American I don't think. The oddest thing about the image really is that for some reason they're completely hairless below the neck. GMGtalk10:53, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
Much of the previous discussion was at Talk:Human/Image but not necessarily most of it. This has come up with surprising frequency over the years, but rarely with any fresh thoughts or novel ideas. If we're going to go down this road again with any seriousness, we really need to look carefully through the archives because the discussion thus far in this thread has been quite redundant. For instance, the collage idea was discussed at some length before. Anyone really intent on switching back to the Pioneer plaque may want to consider reading this incredibly long archived discussion from my user talk wherein a now inactive user explains precisely why the plaque image is inappropriate and also very patiently and cogently defines what we should be looking for in an image here. If I had the time, I'd distill that discussion down into something a lot shorter. I was a staunch defender of the Pioneer plaque but seeds of doubt were planted in my mind, and eventually logic and reason took root. RivertorchFIREWATER15:37, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
We'll, I don't think we need to really re-litigate in detail a discussion from almost ten years ago. Frankly, I think a lot of the abject overthinking going on at the /Image discussion is just not needed at all. We can't and won't, find a perfect image, nor a perfect combination of images. But we don't need to. We just need to find something that's a moderate improvement. I think the life cycle is a pretty good objective standard to use, and probably something that would need illustrated if a Martian came down and read our encyclopedia article on ourselves to figure out what we are. If it makes everybody feel better, we can even use the current image to illustrate adulthood. Although it's best with this template to mix orientations on rows, and using two upright oriented images tends to make them oversized compared to a mixed row, or a row with two landscape oriented images. GMGtalk15:55, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
Re-litigate? That's an interesting word to choose! In any event, what you consider "overthinking" may be considered by others just thinking. Look, I realize that consensus can change in ten years (or even in ten months), but for an article such as this one with few current-event considerations, that should usually be the result of new arguments being brought to the table, not a rehashing of old ones.
About collages: I find most of them unsuitable for infobox use because each of their images is too small to be useful without expanding it. (This would be an even bigger issue with mobile devices.) Collages also tend to make the top of a page look busy and unattractive graphically. For those reasons, and perhaps others, most animal article infoboxes use single images. It's sometimes a battle keeping this article parallel to those articles and not "special" because it was written by members of its subject, so anything making it stand out from the others may not be such a good idea. RivertorchFIREWATER16:22, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
Hmm. Perhaps we should disclose our COI? At any rate, using multiple images is the best suggestion I'm likely to come up with. As it happens, I'm not terribly emotionally attached to whether or not it's used. GMGtalk16:39, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
Like Rivertorch above, I was once a strong defender of the Pioneer plaque but extremely patient and prolonged explanations convinced me that it was inappropriate, and that the current image is the best achievable. The key point is that no image can answer all criticisms—people will want changes forever, regardless of what is displayed. One problem with a montage is that it invites people to add pictures, or to argue about the number of people shown from various areas. Johnuniq (talk) 23:40, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
That's an excellent point. A montage would provide several times the number of things to argue over. Honestly, even if it were feasible to include a hundred images, such an array wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface in terms of representing the incredible diversity of H. sapiens sapiens. It would just provide 99 additional targets for people to criticize or, alternately, 99 additional missed opportunities. (What? We didn't depict a blue-eyed, black-haired Middle Eastern cisgender woman under age 50 wearing traditional clothing in an agricultural setting? How could we make such an omission?) Am I 100% happy with the image we've been using for years now? No. But I have yet to see another image, or group of images, that I think would better serve the purpose. RivertorchFIREWATER16:43, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
I remember contributing to the criteria and choice of image some years ago. Rivertorch's suggested images are good to think about, and the ideal of somehow including a child was one of those included as point 6 in User:Silence's list back then. A couple of additional thoughts: (a) these are all free images, but I'm wondering whether the (proposed) subjects of know of their unusual role in Wikipedia; (b) what the most important aspects of the article to illustrate are, in particular whether the focus is on pre-agricultural societies that represent millions of years of evolution after divergence from chimps[17], farming as at present, or modern urbanisation and consumption. If the latter, I like picture 'B' in that it depicts use of symbols in play and mass-produced items − and perhaps that a Monopoly board is a complex representation of economics − but the image proportions make it unsuitable (and it has a cultural bias to North America). If not, then the Chamorro image could be good if not for the image contrast. I'm slightly surprised that someone hasn't produced an image for the purpose in all these years: that would resolve any uncertainty over issue (a), but not necessarily (b). --Cedderstk12:24, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
The article uses "chimpanzee" in its sense as the name for genus Pan. I think this is acceptable here, since trying to change all four occurances of "chimpanzee" to "chimpanzees and bonobos" in that one short paragraph will make it look really messy. Our article Chimpanzee is about the whole genus, and bonobos are still referred to as chimps according to that article.-Arch dude (talk) 03:21, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
Such a picture showing male and female(live model) is not needed. When humans is a common topic that anyone can access I feel that children and youngsters who may use the internet more may be affected by such content. They may be misguided by these images. We may not be able to control them all the time or check what they do on the internet. Drawings are always enough for such content. I hope I could change the images to help children and youngsters.
Arcad1951 (talk) 14:46, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Hey Arcad1951. Articles on Wikipedia are not censored, either for nudity, sexual content, or offensive language, so long as the content meaningfully supports an encyclopedic understanding of the subject. The images on this article have been discussed many times previously, which you can find in the talk page archives linked to above, and there has so far been no broad consensus to change them. GMGtalk14:52, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Attempts to remove the image of human nude figures appear to be built on an assumption that nudes are somehow "bad." This is highly debatable. Context is important. When discussing the anatomy of humans, an image is helpful. In such contexts, images are educational rather than in poor taste. Basic textbooks in biology, as well as encyclopedias, contain similar images. Children will be exposed to images of nudes in a variety of books in their school library or local library. We don't ban such books. Why should we ban images on an electronic encyclopedia? BronHiggs (talk) 19:34, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Silliness. Noone is negatively affected by seeing nude humans. Removing pictures of human anatomy from the article on humans negatively affect our readers.·maunus · snunɐɯ·20:23, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Is this the respect to be given to paternal instincts.What Arcad1951 said is right.The image is unnecessary and a drawing or outline is enough. Why do the editors have to be very firm ? What are they going to lose by respecting a parent's (and many other parents )worries? What is going to happen if the image replaces a drawing? If they change the image, parents can be sure that their children can learn useful things without their children getting misleaded.
Guru40 (talk) 00:53, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
At least make it smaller. The picture at the moment is ginormous and does not need to be that big at all. If people want to view it they can click it. Also a lot of viewers are going to be kids in class researching and they do not need a massive nude picture taking up half the screen. It's not even that far down the page. I know Wikipedia is not meant to be censored but this is way over the top. And a detailed drawing displays the information just as well. NixinovaTC06:46, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
Half the screen? On my laptop, whose monitor probably has lower-than-average resolution, the image takes up less than 15% of the screen. On my desktop, it's even less. I have to admit the image does take up half the screen—maybe a little more—on my phone. I guess we'll just have to hope that those poor kids researching humans aren't allowed to use their phones in class. They might see something encyclopedic, and we can't have that. It won't even help them on standardized tests. RivertorchFIREWATER19:39, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
I just removed two (more or less equivalent) statements: Evidence, based on exhaustive DNA barcode studies, suggest that current human biology emerged between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago and, from their beginnings, is largely unchanged genetically. and Evidence, based on exhaustive DNA barcode studies, suggest that current human biology emerged between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago and, from their beginnings, is largely unchanged genetically. The statements were sourced by phys.org and biorxiv. Neither source backs up the claim made in the article. This is unsurprising since the study in question focusses on one gene in the mitochondrial dna and would therefore not support any such claim. Moreover, since we know at least some evolution occurred (variety in skin-colors and lactose tolerance, for example), the statement seems to contradict reality. I cordially invite Drbogdan to comment. Kleuske (talk) 16:04, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
@Kleuske: Thank you *very much* for your comments - seemed my edits (1; 2) (including my edit in the "Animal" article => Evidence, based on exhaustive DNA barcode studies, suggest that about 90% of current animal life, including humans, emerged between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago and, from their beginnings, are largely unchanged genetically.[1][2]) were ok and were consistent with the cited references[1][2] - however - after a closer look, you may be correct - nonetheless - comments from other editors are welcome of course - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 16:26, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
There's currently an attempt to insert the phrase "are the dominant species on Earth" into the very beginning of the lede, which I would strenuously object to - that is a highly subjective statement that would require all manner of relativization and context, and it is certainly not undisputed (the argument has been made for various ants, Euphausia krill, a couple types of algae, and a virus, for starters). I'm noting this here to underline that consensus is requested for this kind of change to a high-profile article. Firebrace, "take it or leave it" won't cut it. Discuss and generate consensus. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:53, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
OK, I'll bite: 'dominant' is not another word for 'most abundant' as you seem to think. Per WP:LEAD, "the notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences". I would say humans are most notable for being the dominant species on Earth. Currently, the word 'species' is first mentioned in paragraph three of the lead, and that is in the context of humans destroying the planet. (How are we managing to do that if we're not the dominant species?) Firebrace (talk) 17:03, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I agree that "dominance" here does not translate to "greatest biomass", but to influence on the global biosphere. And in that very context the case can be made for a rather larger variety of organisms than you seem to think. E.g., messing substantially with one or two green algae species would lower global oxygen levels more rapidly than anything humans could do to the atmosphere. A few years of zero krill recruitment would damage the Southern ocean ecosystem to the point of a global marine extinction event. And so on. - The point is, this is not an easy or uncontroversial label to slap on humans w/o some extended discussion and sourcing in the text, which is why it has no business just being dropped into the lede (of a Vital Article with 5k daily page views, no less). --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:42, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
'Messed with' by whom – elephants? So krill are a contender for dominant species because its absence (rather than presence) has the potential to cause a hypothetical extinction event. Is this real or am I hallucinating? And 5k is nothing; some articles on my watchlist have 20k+ daily page views. Yours is the worst kind of anti-change gate-keeping behaviour that hinders Wikipedia instead of helping it. Firebrace (talk) 18:44, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
You may be hallucinating about your mandate to substantially and unilaterally change the lede of a vital article without discussion, by inserting a "summary" of something that is not discussed in the text. Let's wait for some more input, shall we. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:51, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
You have no mandate to prevent change for the sake of preventing it by clutching at straws like this. Let's see WP:RS for krill being the dominant species on Earth. What are your reliable sources for "dominant species on the Earth" being a controversial label of humanity. I'm not interested in this change-blocking whataboutery or your personal views on the topic, because you're not a reliable source. Firebrace (talk) 22:10, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
What do the sources say? We have one source for Humans being the dominant species[1], but are there other sources that disagree? Also, having only one source for such a bold statement in a vital article is not enough. While I do lean on having that statement in the article (as Humans do have the greatest influence on the biosphere, when we consider intentional actions), I think it's better to have a discussion first, and also find more sources. Full disclosure: I'm a member of the species described in the article. =) byteflushTalk22:07, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
It's clear that "dominant" has many definitions. No matter what one source says ( and what others don't say), it's simply not encyclopaedic to use such an ambiguous word in the article. We don't repeat sloppy language just because a source uses it. HiLo48 (talk) 00:28, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@HiLo48: I fully agree with that. That's why I asked for more reliable sources before we can add it. One sloppy source is WP:FRINGE territory, so - even though I agree with the source (based on my personal definition of "dominant") - it shouldn't be added yet. =) byteflushTalk00:38, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Extended content
Your user name has just helped me remember that "Dominant" is the brand name of a range of toilet cleaning products in my country. Perhaps that's subconsciously influencing my views here. ;-) HiLo48 (talk) 00:43, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Dominant - Whoa, source overkill. Though, I must agree that for all meaningful purposes of dominant, humans fulfill it. It's one of the most important traits of the species and as such - it should be mentioned in the lede, with accompanying text somewhere in the article body (along with most prominent sources). byteflushTalk02:00, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for looking up the references below, Firebrace; that's good sourcing and demonstrates that the use is widespread enough to be treated as mainstream. However, the point remains that the lede is a summary of article content and not a buzzword repository. So some of this needs to be integrated into the actual article before it can go into the lede. Presumably the end of the Habitat and population subsection, where the general topic is touched on, would be a good position. Furthermore, unless that treatment is quite extensive and so makes up a fundamental part of the article (which I doubt is the plan), it shouldn't be the very first thing in the very first sentence, because "dominant" status is not what the article is about. The way the lede is structured, it would actually be best integrated in the last paragraph. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 06:06, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Just a brief note to record my agreement with Elmidae. Per wp:lead, the opening paragraph should [a] provide a brief summary of the key points of the article ("tell 'em what you are going to tell 'em") and [b] the longer the article, the more stringent the test of what constitutes "key point". I doubt if anyone [apart from rats and cockroaches] disagrees that humans are the dominant species but no way does that point merit being hammered into the first sentence of the article. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:46, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
"Michele Soulé (2002), a pioneer in the field of conservation biology aptly put it when he noted that human beings are certainly the dominant species but we are clearly not a keystone species, for when you remove a keystone species biodiversity itself collapses." – John Blewitt (2014). Understanding Sustainable Development. Routledge. p. 158. ISBN978-1-134-60489-0.
"We uphold attitudes, based on the "laws" of natural selection and survival of the fittest, which presume that dominance equals fittest or best and that therefore, as the dominant species, whatever humans do is proper." – Renée Hetherington (2012). Living in a Dangerous Climate: Climate Change and Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press. p. 196. ISBN978-1-107-01725-2.
"One of the most ominous of recent observations is a quantitative analysis of the extent to which humans dominate earth's ecosystem: one-third to one-half of the land surface has been transformed by human activity, with both land and water supplies nearing fundamental limits." – James R. Sheats (2001). "Information Technology in Sustainable Development". In Richard C. Dorf (ed.). Technology, Humans, and Society: Toward a Sustainable World. Academic Press. p. 146. ISBN978-0-12-221090-7.
"First, humans dominate Earth's ecosystems (Groffman and Likens 1994, Botsford et al. 1997, Chapin et al. 1997, Matson et al. 1997, Noble and Dirzo 1997, Vitousek et al. 1997); therefore, humans must be integrated into models for a complete understanding of extant ecological systems." – Nancy B. Grimm; J. Grove Grove; Steward T. A. Pickett; Charles L. Redman (2000). "Integrated Approaches to Long-Term Studies of Urban Ecological Systems". BioScience. 50 (7): 571–584.
"For them it came as an absolute human imperative to explore all options for the likely evacuation by humans of the planet: "Otherwise, all this will have been for nothing." By "all this" they meant the vast epic of life on earth, with humans as the latest dominant species. Plainly they assumed that, now that we are here, human life should continue in its dominant role…" – Rosaleen Love (2001). Reefscape: Reflections on the Great Barrier Reef. Joseph Henry Press. p. 185. ISBN978-0-309-51308-1.
"As humans evolved, the size of their brains increased. This large, efficient brain and several other new traits … allowed humans to become the dominant species on this planet." – Charles K. Levy (1979). Biology, Human Perspectives. Goodyear Publishing Company. p. 30. ISBN978-0-87620-343-9.
"In ecological terms, humans are the dominant species." – Wentworth B. Clapham (1981). Human Ecosystems. Macmillan Publishing Company. p. 1. ISBN978-0-02-322510-9.
"However, during the past several thousand years, humans have become the dominant species on Earth…" – Bill Freedman; Todd Leon Keith (1998). Encyclopedia of Endangered Species. Vol. 2. Gale Research. p. xiii. ISBN978-0-8103-9315-8.
"Humans are the dominant species on Earth and are therefore an implicit component of the study of its ecosystems (Vitousek et al. 1997; Grimm et al. 2000)" – Craig R. Allen; C. S. Holling (2008). Discontinuities in Ecosystems and Other Complex Systems. Columbia University Press. p. 137. ISBN978-0-231-51682-2.
"Homo sapiens has secured its place as the dominant species on Earth not by natural strength but by its ability to invent and make use of tools. This has enabled us to appropriate, according to Sundquist (2008), some 45 per cent of terrestrial biological net primary production (NPP) and a further 5–10 per cent of marine NPP, far more than any other species." – Hillary J. Shaw (2014). The Consuming Geographies of Food: Diet, Food Deserts and Obesity. Routledge. p. 1. ISBN978-1-136-67932-2.
"Concomitant with these structural changes, humankind has become the functionally dominant species in all the world's major ecosystems. By the end of the twentieth century, human beings, one species among millions, were already appropriating directly and indirectly up to half of net terrestrial primary productivity and 30% of net estuarine and continental shelf production (the source of 96% of the global fisheries catch) for their own use (Vitousek et al., 1986; Pauly and Christensen, 1995)." – Rodney Tolley (2003). Sustainable Transport: Planning for Walking and Cycling in Urban Environments. CRC Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN978-0-8493-1783-5.
"Today Homo sapiens has emerged as the dominant species on the planet, as measured by its collective effects on earth's ecosystems." – John Kricher (2009). The Balance of Nature: Ecology's Enduring Myth. Princeton University Press. p. 1. ISBN1-4008-3026-5.
"We do this consciously or unconsciously, by our mere presence as an inevitably dominant species. Indeed, our dominance, accorded us by our brain, is itself a product of natural forces." – Jane Bennett; William Chaloupka (1993). In the Nature of Things: Language, Politics, and the Environment. University of Minnesota Press. p. 131. ISBN978-0-8166-2307-5.
"Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet’s land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity." – Bob Holmes (11 October 2006). "Imagine Earth without people". New Scientist. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
"In just the last 50,000 years, Homo sapiens has expanded out of Africa to become the most dominant species the Earth has ever experienced. Near-exponential population growth, global colonization, and socioeconomic development have been fueled by extracting resources from the environment and transforming them into people, goods, and services." – Joseph R. Burger; Craig D. Allen; James H. Brown; William R. Burnside; Ana D. Davidson; Trevor S. Fristoe; Marcus J. Hamilton; Norman Mercado-Silva; Jeffrey C. Nekola; Jordan G. Okie; Wenyun Zuo (2012). "The Macroecology of Sustainability". PLoS Biology. 10 (6).
"Clearly, humans have proven to be highly adaptable to both environmental and social changes. This adaptability is one of the primary traits that have allowed humans to become the dominant species on Earth." – Tim Kelley (2013). "Environmental Health Resilience". Environmental Health Insights (7): 29–31.
"Since emerging from Africa 60,000 years ago, humans have spread to virtually every terrestrial habitat, we have evolved to become the most dominant species on Earth." – "The First Great Divergence: How Culture Transformed our Species". London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
The use of the pronoun "they" referring to humans makes it sound like this article is not written by a human. Since a human will always have read or written this article, we should use "we" when referring to the modern Homo Sapiens. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.164.27.181 (talk) 03:13, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
Where is consensus underlying that FAQ section? It does not point to any discussion...
There are namely two massive problems with its reasoning: 1) There is no reason why the use of "they" would mitigate bias; 2) We can be sure that only humans are reading our content. Carl Fredrik talk23:32, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
(1) Really? I think it helps keep the article NPOV-compliant by forcing us write to about ourselves as a species, not as the namer of species. (2) That's very terracentric of you. I suspect—but can't know for sure—that only humans have read it thus far. I certainly wouldn't rule out other species reading it in the future. In any event, you're welcome to hunt though the archives. The question has come up many times, hence the FAQ. RivertorchFIREWATER21:12, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
No need to look for aliens: this article has been read, parsed and interpreted by countless machines and algorithms already. Those are definitely not human. — JFGtalk04:27, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
I did say species, but perhaps I should have specified sentient, carbon-based species. Or not. Seriously, if we ever send another Voyager out of the solar system, in addition to a less stylized plaque, it should have the contents of Wikipedia on it. (We might consider redacting talk pages and noticeboards, or at least ANI.) There's no telling who might read that. Even now, with wireless signals, bits and pieces of WP, presumably including this article, must be traveling through space, just ready for decoding.... RivertorchFIREWATER13:03, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
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Add request:
From: Humans use tools to a much higher degree than any other animal, are the only extant species known to build fires and cook their food, and are the only extant species to clothe themselves and create and use numerous other technologies and arts.
To: Humans use tools to a much higher degree than any other animal. They are the only extant species known to build fires and cook their food, to utilize money, to utilize technology in Outer Space, to record history, to use imprisonment and hostage situations, to clothe themselves, along with creating and utilizing numerous other technologies and arts. English Correctorer (talk) 13:52, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Nope. Actually much of the maintenance work on this page consists of preventing people from pushing that very point. I think the article is doing fine in the neutrality department. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 08:05, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Image of person in Science section
Should an image be placed in the science section to illustrate it? Maybe a well-regarded scientist in the field from history? Just wanted to check with you all here before I made an edit someone might disagree with. -NowIsntItTime(chats)(doings)19:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Well, problem is that, if applied consistently, you wind up having to put a warning on every article that contains anything offensive to anyone in any culture. Nudity is an oft recurring discussion, and on this article in particular. Another is images of Mohammad. Images of Mohammad are exceptionally offensive, and even perhaps criminally liable in some contexts, but not for all of them, and the images have a clear educational value. Similar situation with nudity really. GMGtalk21:10, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Missing elements
Missing is the basic idea of the human condition, it being of some elements like a struggle for living basics and satisfactory mating; using one's body and mind to have a social life and a life of service to humankind; being of divine origins and destinies and yet of insufficient and absurd realities. -Inowen (nlfte) 00:34, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
Lead, paragraph 1 editing
I am new to this page. I have edited paragraph 1 for simplicity and readability to answer the questions in plain English: What are the characteristics of a human? and How is a human classified? I have not read the dozens of archived Talk pages, so I may be stepping on already debated issues. Please do not revert my edits without discussion here.
The purpose of the Lead to summarize the Sections of the Article in the order presented. I do not believe paragraphs 2-5 do this, and will be editing them in the near future with that goal in mind. Regards, IiKkEe (talk) 07:44, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
I reverted your changes, which were indeed breaks with longstanding consensus. Please do not reinstate them without discussion and consensus here. The article is not about the genus, but about Homo sapiens, specifically. Hence your change to the definition was not an improvement. Manual dexterity is not just about opposable thumbs. Behavior and psychology is not the same thing. Evolution and history are not the same thing. The lead has been carefully crafted to include as much of the information in the body as is possible given the extremely wide scope of the article, but I am happy to work with you to improve it. Please suggest your changes here before editing the lead, so that we may save ourselves the reverts.·maunus · snunɐɯ·10:45, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
snunɐɯ· Thank you for your prompt and courteous response as to why you reverted my 23 edits, and your willingness to work with me. Let me start out by acknowledging your contribution to this Article: 221 edits since Sep 2010, 88,265 characters added. I am in no rush, I will return here soon to discuss changes which I believe are improvements. Best wishes, IiKkEe (talk) 18:10, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, I am sure we can find ways to improve the article. I much prefer to work from high quality sources (by which I mean primarily, for broad general articles like these generally, well-established tertiary sources such as commonly used text books, review articles, and articles in professional encyclopedias). So let's try to bring sources to support our arguments.·maunus · snunɐɯ·18:51, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
Lead
Shouldn't it, like most other animal articles (e.g. Horse, Alpaca), read "The Human is..."? A difference in the lead may suggest s POV issue, as if Humans are a superior animal. IWI (chat) 21:02, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
It's nothing to do with superiority, just a matter of smooth grammar. See e.g. Sheep, Elephant, Crocodile for counter-examples. Both "The X is ..." and "Xs are ..." are perfectly acceptable in context. (The capital "H" in your "Human" on the other hand would appear to show superiority.) Peter coxhead (talk) 22:37, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
Opening
The long-standing opening sentence was recently changed to:
"The human" is bad English. "Humans (taxonomically, Homo sapiens) are a species ..." is correct.
Baldly stating that humans are a species of great ape does not reflect the complexity of English usage. Humans are a species in the family Hominidae; the Hominidae are called "great apes" in some circumstances, but not all, as is discussed e.g. at Ape#Historical and modern terminology. The terms "ape" and "great ape" are used to either include or exclude humans (examples of Dawkins' usage is shown at User:Peter coxhead/Work page#Dawkins' use of "ape".)
You claim that "the human" is improper english; actually, "Humans (taxonomically, Homo sapiens) are a species" is incorrect, as homo sapiens should be followed by "is", not "are" as seen in the Wikipedia article for homo sapiens, which reads: "In taxonomy, Homo sapiens is the only extant human species."
So your first claim is false.
Secondly, the Wikipedia article itself for great ape uses the term interchangeably with "Hominidae". There should be consistency across Wikipedia, which brings me to my next point:
Every other article for the great apes: the common chimpanzee, the bonobo, the gorilla, and the orangutan, refers to the species as a great ape in the opening. Furthermore, Dawkins' usage of the term doesn't negate the biological fact that humans are apes, and are a member of the great ape family. As such, the change should stay, and I hope that consensus can build around actually referring to humans as great apes, which, biologically speaking, is what they are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bussta333 (talk • contribs) 00:01, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
The article is about "Humans" the species name is a parenthetical, hence plural is grammatically correct. Also humans are not like all other species of great apes - because they do in fact for example write encyclopedias. Hence the notion that there needs to be some sort of micro-level degree of consistency between the article on humans and any other biological species is unwarranted. ·maunus · snunɐɯ·09:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Bussta333:stop making changes while there is an open discussion.
"The human" is without doubt very odd. Species names are treated as either singular or plural depending on the context. Perhaps "Humans are a species (taxonomically, Homo sapiens) ..." would read better.
There's no divided usage over "great ape" for the other members of the Hominidae, so they don't offer a useful precedent; as Maunus says, there's no need for such consistency. We are not here to "build consensus", but to report reliable sources.
There are various pairs of terms involving human whee there are two well attested usages. As a different example, consider "animal" vs. "human". In biological contexts, clearly "animals" include "humans"; no-one disputes this. But we still make distinctions in other contexts, e.g. "animal rights" means "non-human animal rights"; "eating animals" does not include "eating humans"; the exact phrase "humans and animals" gets 30 million Google hits, over four times as many as "humans and other animals". Similarly "humans and great apes" gets almost twice as many Google hits as "humans and other great apes".
No-one is arguing that humans are not great apes, when "great apes" is used to mean Hominidae. But to maintain the required (not optional) WP:NPOV, we must also reflect the more common use when it means "Hominidae except humans". Peter coxhead (talk) 09:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
You seem to be forgetting something. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view requires us to represent "all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." Random hits in a google search do not equate to reliable sources. Cherry-picking random phrases from texts that are about other topics is not useful either. Again, we need reliable sources to support any statement on a subject. Dimadick (talk) 16:01, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
No, I absolutely agree that NPOV and sourcing is vital. There are careful sourced discussions in the article, and several others, explaining the historical and current use of terminology. The lead needs to present a balanced summary of the rest of the article, which I believe it does now, and which the version I objected to did not, as it baldly stated that humans are a species of great ape, which reflects only one sourced use of the term. My examples from Dawkins are only one of many reliable sources that can be used to illustrate the point. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:18, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
You are aware that we don't have a "great ape" article, right? The main article is Hominidae. 8 surviving species and many extinct ones. We don't need to use synonyms. Dimadick (talk) 18:30, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
There are a couple problems with this sentence
This is a sentence in the "Transition to modernity" section in this article:
This correlates with population growth (especially in America)[63] and higher life expectancy, the World population rapidly increased numerous times in the 19th and 20th centuries as nearly 10% of the 100 billion people lived in the past century.[64]
This sentence is leading the reader to believe that 100 billion people lived in the last century despite the writer intending to mean that approximately 100 billion humans have ever lived. Therefore the sentence should read, "...and 20th centuries as the number of people who lived in the past century represents nearly 10% of the 100 billion people who have ever lived."
The second problem is that the current source given does not actually state that fact. This source may be more appropriate though then you would have to change the sentence to, "...and 20th centuries as the number of people who lived in the past century represents approximately 7% of the 108 billion people who have ever lived."
Under Psychology, Sexuality and love, second to last sentence, the statement is made that Kinsey found that "only small minorities [are] fully heterosexual or homosexual." The links for the citation given were broken and could not be followed up on. I recommend deleting this phrase, as I have never heard that Kinsey believed only a small minority to be fully heterosexual. At any rate, more recent research finds full heterosexuality to be a large majority. See Demographics of sexual orientation and references therein.
Also, I suggest editing or removing reference to Freud's ideas, as these are widely considered outdated.
This article and that for Homo sapiens appear to be redundant. What is the rational, if any, for separate articles?
There was a discussion about it in 2016 here. Personally, at a glance I'd favor a merge, but the consensus at the time was pretty strong to keep them separate. - Sdkb (talk) 20:31, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
lead is pretty good but....
Since as of today most readers would be humans (with the exception of some computer programs which may read the article) it is a bit weird to talk about humans so clinically and exclusively in the third person in the lead - in other words it is confusing.
I think that style is fine after a quick nod to show that you're talking about people.
In fact the word "people" occurs throughout the text (25 times) but only in the fifth paragraph of the lead does this appear in the article.
I think this could be rectified simply by making it clear that you will talk about people:
Humans (taxonomically, Homo sapiens, commonly referred to as people)
is my suggestion. What do you think?
Somewhat agree. You raise a good point and I agree there should be a nod to humans = people. But the words have different connotations: "human(s)" is associated with the type of animal in isolation while "people" has connotations of societies and culture. So on top of introducing the term "people" with a quick definition, I think the word "people" should be avoided (in favour of "humans") until the article talks about society and culture. I also don't think it's a problem for the article to talk about humans clinically in the third person since it allows us to discuss ourselves from a rational, outside perspective and fits the general style of Wikipedia articles. It's important to know your audience and the audience of the article will almost invariably be humans but it's also a good idea to discuss things from an outsider's perspective to look at things objectively. Jamgoodman (talk) 20:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 24 July 2019
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"resulting in now acknowledging the hominids as encompassing multiple species"
Since there's a consensus among scientists that humans will go extinct by 2100 due to climate change, shouldn't the species be listed as "vulnerable", possibly "endangered", or at the very least "near threatened"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.72.200.210 (talk) 04:25, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
Has someone whose job it is (like say, the IUCN), conducted an assessment and come to such a conclusion? There's a procedure for these things, and if it hasn't been done, it hasn't been done. Sumanuil (talk) 04:32, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
Virtually every climate scientist and biologist, as well as NASA, NOAA, and the IPCC have concluded that humans will be extinct by 2100 due to climate change and that the extinction process has already begun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.72.208.205 (talk) 02:03, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
Name one scientific body that says this ("all") — for example, you've mentioned "NASA, NOAA, and the IPCC." El_C04:53, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
I would go further and ask for specific quotes from organizations stating that humans will go extinct by 2100. I have heard that human society will go extinct by 2100, or that some large percent of people will die by 2100, but with 7.7 billion members of the species extant, it would take 99.999 percent death rate to even start to end humans. Rockphed (talk) 13:40, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
Photo
There is something vaguely strange about a photo of a farmer couple to represent all humans. It seems to make 'humans' to be some sort of exotic 'other'. Why not, for example, a couple of tourists in Times Square? A different sort of 'exotic' to be sure. I don't have a specific solution, but something is not quite right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Girlgeek z (talk • contribs) 00:39, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
Combined biomass of all humans
The article says that would be 60 million tons. I suppose this means 60 billion kg. With 7.7 billion individuals this would be 7.8 kg per individual. Though there are babies to count, I cannot believe this. Has anybody got an idea how to correct this? --xbx (talk) 19:37, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
A closer look at the reference has manifested that it is 60 million tons of carbon mass only, thus not counting the non-carbon part of the body. Biomass_(ecology)#Global_biomass tells us that the total wet biomass (what people usually call their weight) of all humans is 385 million tons, with 50 kg per individual.
I am not sure how to correct this in the best way. Either correct the number, or explain that this is carbon only? --xbx (talk) 20:11, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images, images should "look" at the text, which means the Allegory of Music painting should be on the left side of the page so that it "looks" right. This Wikipedia style guide is simply good page layout, a classic, longstanding directive in print media. It aligns with widespread practices. Binksternet (talk) 15:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
@Binksternet: please elaborate on why MOS:IMGLOC is "wrong", the people pictured in the two images are facing different directions, therefore the placement should be on the right as it is the default per the MOS. QuestFour (talk) 16:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
I'm aware that you think that, but how exactly does your argument wins over? The section discussing image placement at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images, MOS:IMGLOC, states: Most images should be right justified on pages, which is the default placement. and It is often preferable to place images of people so that they "look" toward the text. Why does the latter "wins out" the former? As I mentioned above, the people pictured are facing different directions, and if anything, words such as "most", "should" and "default" are superior to "often" and "preferable" IMO. Also, please don't revert to your preferred version until consensus has been reached. QuestFour (talk) 06:59, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Scope
We need to clearly define the difference between the human article and the Homo sapiens article. I was under the impression Homo sapiens discussed specifically Anatomically modern humans and so requested a move but people came back saying it's very obvious that Homo sapiens is different from "human", and it's already widely known Homo sapiens equates to Anatomically modern human and the difference is very much apparent (which is a boldface lie as "human" and "Homo sapiens" are exactly the same to literally the entire world). Then we got to Human discussing only culture and philosophy (in which case we would have a redundancy with culture and philosophy) and Homo sapiens discussing only anatomy and evolution (in which case we have a redundancy with human evolution, human taxonomy, and anatomy). In any instance, it's a really terrible idea to have 2 articles with the same taxobox because anyone reading them is going to be confused what the scope is supposed to be and what the difference between the two article is. So in conclusion, it's a terrible idea to have an article using the common name of a species while also having a completely separate article using the binomial name of the same species. What's the difference I ask. Further, Homo sapiens as it stands right now has the exact same scope as the human evolution article, and everything said in Homo sapiens (and I'm not exaggerating) should be repeated in human evolution; please do not try to argue that Homo sapiens has a truly unique scope and the situation is fine as it is, as this is a boldface lie User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk18:29, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
I agree that the present setup is confused. There are two separate issues that could usefully be addressed.
The scope of the articles in terms of the taxa that are covered. There can be articles on the genus Homo, each of its species, including Homo sapiens, and on any accepted subspecies, e.g. H. sapiens neanderthalensis if it were accepted as a subspecies rather than a species. Personally, I equate "human" to the genus Homo, not to H. sapiens or H. sapiens sapiens, but this is a perennial problem when English names of taxa rather than scientific names are used as article titles – the meaning of English names is often context-dependent so they don't work well as article titles.
Managing splits when a subtopic becomes large enough to have its own article, and in particular ensuring that only a summary is present in the overall article.
Does anyone know what this phrase in the intro actually means? Can we come up with some better language to use? Sdkb (talk) 08:23, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
Misuse of semicolons
"Humans use tools more frequently and effectively than any other animal; and are the only extant species to build fires, cook food, clothe themselves, and create and use numerous other technologies and arts."
The short description is coming up as "Hominin events for the last 10 million years" even though when you look at the article source it says "Species of hominid". I'm not quite sure what the former means, and I don't understand where it's coming from or why it's overriding the short description in the article source. CrocodilesAreForWimps (talk) 00:58, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi, Drbogdan. In this edit you re-added a short description to the template which was removed in an earlier edit by UnitedStatesian. However, the result of having a short description in this template seems to be that every article that uses this template is having its own short description overriden with this "Hominin events for the last 10 million years" short description. Not sure if there's a way to keep a short description in this template without having it override all the short descriptions with articles that adopt it? --CrocodilesAreForWimps (talk) 02:01, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
@Crocodilesareforwimps: Thank you for your comments - not clear about the concern, but decided to rem-out the short description - hope this helps in some way - please post if otherwise of course - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 02:47, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
The statement in the section called "Language", "While many species communicate, language is unique to humans...", is not falsifiable, as we don't yet understand the communications of many animals, such as cetaceans and elephants. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:9900:61C:3060:2956:486:8B2D (talk) 15:38, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Behavioral modernity
@Skllagyook: Middle Stone Age has archaeology and paper explains the evolutionary process, and what is about this 300ka you are obsessed with? The Middle Stone Age starts around 550,000 and the paper states 500,000 to explain the evolutionary process. Dalhoa (talk) 22:19, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
@Dalhoa: It's not about personal obsessions. Its about the sources.
I will repeat what I wrote on your Talk page below:
"The source you added does not state that behavioral modernity began at 500kya. It states that by 300kya the brain sizes of early sapiens began to be within the modern range, but that they had not yet become globular. It states that skull globularity began later and associates that with behavioral modernity, though some other studies, such as Brooks et al. and Sahle et al. posit evidence of modern behavior around 320kya (Brooks) and 279kya (Sahle). Earlier studies (based mostly on evidence from South Africa) date the beginning of behavioral modernity to at least around 70kya (evidence from sites such as Blombos, Pinnacle Point and Sibudu), which I also cited in my edit)."
"Our data show that, 300,000 years ago, brain size in early H. sapiens already fell within the range of present-day humans. Brain shape, however, evolved gradually within the H. sapiens lineage, reaching present-day human variation between about 100,000 and 35,000 years ago."
The source also suggests that genetic features (related to the brain) characteristic of sapiens began to be selected for in H. sapiens after the ancestors of sapiens diverged from the ancestors of neanderthals/denisovans, but this does not mean that the full genetic package and abilities associated with full behavioral modernity appeared instantly as soon as the lineage leading to sapiens diverged from the lineage leading to neanderthals/denisovans, and the source does not state that it did. Skllagyook (talk) 22:34, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
There is some range of opinion among scientists regarding the date of the beginning of behavioral modernity. But the most prevalent opinions currently seem to be: either that it began in the later-mid Middle Stone age (roughly around 150-70kya) based on a variety of archaeological sites from Africa such as: Blombos, Sibudu, Aduma, Pinnacle Point, Katanda, etc. and proposed by researchers like Henshilwood, Marean, Lombard, d'Enrico, Mcbreaty and others (this view has become more prevalent than the older view held by researchers such as Klein that it only began as late as 50kya, which is now a minority view due to archaeological showing older dates), or that it (behavioral modernity) began earlier (around 320-200kya) which is supported by recent discoveries such as those of Olorgesailie in Kenya (Brooks et al. 2018) and the evidence from Gademotta in Ethiopia (reported by Sahle et al. 2012). The view that behavioral modernity started at 500kya is not explicit in the source you added (nor seemingly implicit or present at all), and even if it were it would represent a minority view among researchers on the topic (thus featuring it in the lede/introduction as the mainstream view would then be an example of WP:UNDUE and cherry picking WP:CHERRY. Skllagyook (talk) 22:50, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
@Skllagyook:@Skllagyook:
You are engaged in WP:POV, Behavioral modernity did not emerge in 50k like the article was stating, this 2018 paper looked at all those source you are repeating and they concluded that it is a gradual process just like evolution, so please stop this pov.
It is intriguing that the evolutionary brain globularization in H. sapiens parallels the emergence of behavioral modernity documented by the archeological record.
First, the emergence of the Middle Stone Age is close in time to the currently earliest known fossils of early H. sapiens (17) that had large brains but did not exhibit any major changes to (outer) brain morphology (20).
Second, as the H. sapiens brain gradually became more globular, features of behavioral modernity accumulated gradually with time (27).
Third, at the time when brain globularity of our ancestors fell within the range of variation of present-day humans, the full set of features of behavioral modernity had accumulated at the transition from the Middle to the Later Stone Age in Africa and from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe around 50,000 to 40,000 years ago (26). In this context, the “human revolution” just marks the point in time when gradual changes reach full modern behavior and morphology and does not represent a rapid evolutionary event related to only one important genetic change that leads to a rapid emergence of modern human brain morphology and behavioral modernity.
Dalhoa (talk) 23:05, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
@Skllagyook:@Skllagyook: The article stated 50kya before (which is an old view) I updated it to either 100-50kya or by about 300kya (though it should probably state by about 70-100kya or by 300kya). The theor/hypothesis that behavioral modernity only began at 50kya is now a minority view and is not what I am representing here. Nothing you have quoted states that there is evidence that behavioral modernity occurred at 550 or 500 kya. If anything it associates it with globularity (which had not yet occurred then).
You wrote:
"First, the emergence of the Middle Stone Age is close in time to the currently earliest known fossils of early H. sapiens"
Yes, and the first fossils of early H. sapiens (which the article mentions: Irhoud, etc.) are dated to around 300kya, not 550 or 500kya. Skllagyook (talk) 23:12, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
@Skllagyook: Again, behavioral modernity does not appear out of the blue, it is a gradual process of evolution, you need to stop with your pov.
Ancient DNA of archaic Homo representatives and H. sapiens fossils revealed derived genetic features that were fixed in H. sapiens after the population split from the clade including Neandertals and Denisovans more than 500,000 years ago (29–33). These genetic data suggest positive selection within our lineage on genes important for brain function and behavior and, especially, the development of the nervous system....According to the parallels between the emergence of anatomical and behavioral modernity, some of these genes were selected and fixed at different times since the origin of our species and before the transition to the Upper Paleolithic.Dalhoa (talk) 23:25, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
@Dalhoa: The article stated 50kya before (which is an old view) I updated it to either 100-50kya or by about 300kya (though it should probably state by about 70-100kya or by 300kya). The theor/hypothesis that behavioral modernity only began at 50kya is now a minority view and is not what I am representing here. Nothing you have quoted states that there is evidence that behavioral modernity occurred at 550 or 500 kya. If anything it associates it with globularity (which had not yet occurred then).
You wrote:
"First, the emergence of the Middle Stone Age is close in time to the currently earliest known fossils of early H. sapiens"
Yes, and the first fossils of early H. sapiens (which the article mentions: Irhoud, etc.) are dated to around 300kya, not 550 or 500kya. As the study says: "the Jebel Irhoud fossils are either interpreted as the currently earliest known members of the H. sapiens lineage" Skllagyook (talk) 23:12, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
The article now states: " Humans began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity at least by about 100-70,000 years ago and possibly (according to recent evidence) as far back as around 300,000 years ago in the Middle Stone Age (with some features of behavioral modernity possibly beginning earlier)..."
It refers to "evidence of behavioral modernity" (i.e. direct evidence) which has only (so far, according to the sources) appeared in the archaeological record beginning around 320kya (Olorgesailie). However, to accommodate (as a compromose to) your proposed edit and the possibility that some elements of behavioral modernity might have began earlier (which is not explicit in the sources, but is possible/plausible given the gradual development of the sapiens and pre-sapiens brain) I added "(with some features of behavioral modernity possibly beginning earlier)" - but even that addition is very tenuously supported by the source and likely borders on WP:OR. Skllagyook (talk) 23:31, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
@Dalhoa: (I was finishing and editing my previous response, but due to an editing conflict it did not allow me to edit it, so I reposted it in full above. That is why some of what I wrote before is repeated above - please read the full response/full version of my response above as well as this one below)
Regarding your most recent response (and please also read my full response above this one), as I explained before (I will quote here again, paraphrased):
"The source also suggests that genetic features (related to the brain) characteristic of sapiens began to be selected for in H. sapiens after the ancestors of sapiens diverged from the ancestors of neanderthals/denisovans, but this does not mean that the full genetic package and abilities associated with full behavioral modernity (or even necessarliy a large part of it) appeared when the lineage leading to sapiens diverged from the lineage leading to neanderthals/denisovans, and the source does not state that it did."
The source only states that stone brain-related genes began (began) to be selected for early on, and does not claim that behavioral modernity (which it seems to associate with the period when the modern globular modern brain shape was acquired): " the range of today’s shape variation is therefore reached approximately between 100,000 and 35,000 years ago." An very indirect inference based on/extrapolated from one study proposing a gradual model of human brain development is not the same as support for the claim that behavioral modernity began 550kya. Skllagyook (talk) 23:40, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
@Skllagyook: You have deliberately deleted my answer, again, behavioral modernity does not appear out of nowhere, it is a gradual process of the H.sapiens origin from 500k and Middle stone age supports that archaeologically. I am going to add back my statement and if you revert me I will report you to Administration notice board, you are not the arbitrator of Wikipedia, you cannot decide what to add and not add based on your pov. Dalhoa (talk) 23:52, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
@Dalhoa: What are you talking about? No I have not. I did not deliberately delete your answer. I deleted something I had written (my answer) so that I could repost it (in its finished form). What I deleted (and reposted) was not your response but mine (although I quoted you in it). Also, on one occasion in this discussion I believe I deleted and reposted my response because I had accidentally "pinged" myself (addressed the message to myself) instead of to you and I wanted to make sure that you received the notification. You should not be so quick to make accusations. Skllagyook (talk) 23:57, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
Also I, as meant to add to my response (before you replied), an indirect inference based on a study on the gradual development of the human brain is not equivalent to a scholarly opinion on the date of the beginning of behavioral modernity, scholarly opinions of which are generally based on behavioral evidence (i.e. from archaeology). Skllagyook (talk) 00:02, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
Dalhoa I have attempted to discuss this issue with you, and instead of responding to my points you have (ignored my recent replies and) reverted me again/reinstated your edit again. I warned you in the edit notes that I would file a report if you reverted again without discussing (if you refused to discuss). I am now filling a report with Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents Skllagyook (talk) 00:14, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
Anatomy you keep comparing to chimpanzees which I don't think is really necessary, like "Another difference between women and chimpanzee females is that women go through the menopause" why don't you just say "women go through menopause, typically after x years"? And "Humans' brains are about three times bigger than in chimpanzees" why don't you just say "the average human brain capacity is x in men and y in women") User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk03:47, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Article is overimaged. Things you could cut are Vitruvian Man in anatomy, Venus of Willendorf and two starved boys, the image of an adult man should be changed to someone a bit less decorated (it could be moved to Body culture), and the template Hominins seems kind of misleading (it looks like a progression from primitive to superior) so you should cut that too User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk03:47, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Kind of strange how you refer to humans as "they", but on the other hand, using "we" feels strange. Maybe you could rearrange sentences to avoid "they" entirely, like instead of "Together with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, they are part of the family Hominidae" you could say, "Humans, together with chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, make up the family Hominidae". Or you could try to get a consensus on the talk page (or check if they already reached one) User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk05:49, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Intro to the lead is a bit too technical. The lead doesn't necessarily have to be structured like the article (like just because the Taxonomy section is first doesn't mean you have to talk about taxonomy first in the lead). Maybe you could talk about the world today to start out with? User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk05:49, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I think the History section focuses way too much on paleo instead of actual history. I think human evolution should just be 1 concise subsection, and then you move onto Ancient history, maybe the Classical Age, the Middle Ages, and then the Post-industrial world User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk23:07, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
Large chunks of the article lack references, and the Motivation and emotion section is completely devoid of them (which I've tagged). A lot of the references are improperly formatted.
Too much anatomy and evolutionary theories and not enough society, culture, and recorded history. Like, in Sexuality and love, you talk about only genitals and hormones instead of, say, marriage or parenthood
As suggested above, some pictures could be replaced. Also, in Sexuality and love, you use a picture of a mother kissing a baby next to a discussion on libido and the size of the human penis
Overall:
Pass/Fail:
Large swathes of the article are unreferenced, and I see an original research tag, which qualify this article for an immediate failure. You are also not the primary author; in fact, you've only contributed about 0.1% of the text in the article. Content-wise, I think this article at present focuses much too heavily on evolution and anatomy as opposed to culture and society (it lacks a good balance). I appreciate your daring to tackle such a huge article, but there is still much expansion to be done before becoming a GA. I hope to see this article back here, but you will need to put in some work to make that happen. Happy editing User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk23:33, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Current
This article uses "current" and "currently" (and probably similar words, too) far too often (so many times that I decided to post here rather than try to fix all of the instances myself). Such words should almost never be used in articles, since they are inherently ambiguous and easily become outdated over time. - dcljr (talk) 10:14, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Absolutely right. One solution is to replace them all with {{As of}} (and then remember to use to past tense because readers will see the text after the "as of" date). Peter coxhead (talk) 11:12, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
I've triedtwice to improve the first instance of such imprecise language, in the lead. (First attempt was reverted; I expect the same fate will befall the second.) Unfortunately, I am hampered by a lack of familiarity with the subject matter. Someone with more knowledge should improve the wording of all instances of "current" and "currently", and most of "recent" and "recently" (although some of the latter instances do provide enough context to stay as the are). - dcljr (talk) 03:18, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dcljr: well, I support your efforts. Just to note that you should use the past tense after "as of", which means that at that point in time something was the case, but may or may not be now. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:47, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
The "Yanomami woman and child" picture caption contained a bit of original research about the generic origins of Native Americans, specifically that they were linked genetically to "East Siberians". It was referenced by a Bradshaw Foundation link that didn't contain the term East Siberia and wasn't really an applicable reference as claims of this sort have to follow WP:MEDRS guidelines.
FWIW the general consensus is that while they are very close to East Siberians in autosomal genetics, Native American uniparental markers link them with central Asians/south Siberians, as in this study:
That's a primary research paper though so a no go for references. Native American languages are also more complex. - Hunan201p (talk) 14:23, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
After looking at it, I conclude your source above is fine, the one you removed was not. Possibly a victim of linkrot, but the Wayback Machine did not provide a better version. So I’m fine with you rewriting the caption using the sciencedirect source. Kleuske (talk) 22:02, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
It has been well over 30 years since the discovery of Gobekli Tepe and other examples of a civilization that existed well over 12000 years ago. This article states as a fact that humans were hunter gatherers till about 10,000 years ago, this has been shown obviously false. Just because we know little about those civilizations is not an excuse to allow falsehoods to be presented as fact.Jiohdi (talk) 21:25, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Human follicles
"Although humans appear hairless compared to other primates, with notable hair growth occurring chiefly on the top of the head, underarms and pubic area, the average human has more hair follicles on his or her body than the average chimpanzee. The main distinction is that human hairs are shorter, finer, and less heavily pigmented than the average chimpanzee's, thus making them harder to see.[1]"
I've looked into the source for this rather recently, and found the following file. Now, unless I'm missing something, the article cited does not seem to make any mention on human follicle number or "quality" at all, focusing on when hairlessness and the invention of clothing happened. Do we have any other sources for this statement or should it just be trashed? 185.163.103.83 (talk) 21:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
^Why Humans and Their Fur Parted Way by Nicholas Wade, New York Times, 19 August 2003.
Picture fix please
The example currently used for at least three critical pages defining humankind, human, homo sapiens and human evolution is currently the same picture of two random farmers from an obscure ethnic sub-population. Obviously we need a better picture, preferably different ones for the different articles for variety's sake. Probably a good example for use on at least one such article would be one showing a larger number of humans representing a broader variety of subtypes. Googinber1234 (talk) 05:28, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Unconsciously, you actually justify the picture as it is. There exist no sub-populations, sub-types or even sub-humans, they are just humans like you and me. In the light of your comment, this is clearly a point that needs restating yet again and the picture does so. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:35, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Human beings are not genetically different enough to be classified into any categories more specific than species. There are no sub-populations. 79.141.163.85 (talk) 13:45, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
Even if that were true, (which it isn't), humans still display a lot of variation in visual appearance which should be accounted for 50.65.103.22 (talk) 23:05, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
Yes, it is true. Show us a single peer-reviewed scientific paper that demonstrates otherwise. The web is littered with billions of pictures of humans, so we don't need to clog this article with more, especially if the subtext is to feed the racism trope. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:43, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
You might be overstating the case slightly John. As a counterexample, many peer-reviewed scientific papers that deal with regional genetic differences will state that region/population genetic differences may be noteworthy, depending on the context/question. As a random example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482164/ I'm not trying to "feed a trope" of any kind. But if the goal is to represent reality, the article and discussion around it should probably try to rise above "axe-grinding": the photos of humans are probably not statistically representative of the average extant human. That said, based on the content so far, I'm not sure what the purpose of this article actually is. Seems to be mostly a battleground of overreaching editors trying to speak for all of humanity, or else deliver sermons to it. If we're legitimately trying to be NPOV, probably what this page should actually contain is 1) a statement that ours is the only species that edits Wikipedia, and thus all of this site should be viewed through that lens (in case any non-human entity ever arises/arrives and views the page) followed by 2) our biological definition of our own species. Any self-indulgent discussions of the role of science, etc, probably don't belong on what should essentially be a taxonomical page, and (IMO) should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.109.217.29 (talk) 12:53, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
I understand the desire to have some variation in photo usage (just as we use different photos for Los Angeles and Greater Los Angeles, even though the objective best photo of one, to the extent it exists, is probably also the best photo of the other). However, there was a lot of thought put into choosing the current photo, as described in this excellent article, and I don't see any urgent need to change it here or elsewhere. Sdkb (talk) 07:05, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
Interesting that the two typical humans pictured nude are carriers of an albinism mutation variant... truly representative of the species?? really?? Most humans are not melanin deficient. This image shows a definite bias and should be replaced with humans without significant mutation.Jiohdi (talk) 21:19, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
The purpose of the picture is to show basic human anatomy, for which purpose they are indeed "representative". (Notice, "light skin" is not one of the labels in the image.) Do you have a better image to suggest, or are you just here to complain? - dcljr (talk) 17:18, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Introduction
Humans (Homo sapiens) are the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina. This is a pretty dry way to introduce our species. Shouldn't it be more like Humans (Homo sapiens) are bipedal, intelligent primates that have become the most dominant species on Earth. LittleJerry (talk) 12:54, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
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Updated Conservation status for Human from Least concern (LC) to Near Threatened (NT) on Conservation status. [1][2]80.233.44.103 (talk) 21:21, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
Updated Conservation status for Human from Least concern (LC) to Near Threatened (NT) on Conservation status, despite of human population is still growing but is slowed dramatically since 2000. It is due to declining in male sperm due to impact of Global Warming, Obesity Crisis, exposed to mobile radiation, Declined in Social Interaction and damaged to Ecosystem.
Not done: Your sources do not confirm (or mention, for that matter) any change in listing of the human on the IUCN Red List. Rummskartoffel (talk) 21:45, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
This edit request to Human has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
Add to lede "Humans are the only living species that have the ability to read this article, and all Wikipedia articles generally" 86.163.156.160 (talk) 23:49, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Just wanted to gauge interest in changing the descriptive words like "they" to "we", considering only humans are going to be reading this, and it's targeted to us. Should this be changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.219.4 (talk) 21:06, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
See MOS:I--Wikipedia is supposed to be written from an outside, observational perspective, or at least that's how I understand it. The editors are not speaking, but rather the encyclopedia itself, which is not human. I guess the exception to this is that the article Wikipedia doesn't use the first-person (;.
This edit request to Human has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
Under the Genetics heading, change the first sentence from "Like all animals" to "Like most animals". The first sentence in this section states that all animals are diploid but there are numerous species that exhibit stable polyploidy (the Wiki page on polyploidy list examples). Heisep (talk) 21:13, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I think the following sentence under 'Art' should be removed or modified:
"The oldest surviving work of great literature is the Epic of Gilgamesh, engraved on ancient Babylonian tablets 4,000 years ago." Source: Puchner, Martin. "How stories have shaped the world". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
This is not only oddly opinionated - who defines 'great' literature? - but also not supported by the source, which references Gilgamesh only in passing and does not say that it is the oldest surviving work of literature at all, let alone 'great' literature. If the claim that Gilgamesh is the oldest extant work of literature can be backed up by reliable sources, that or a similar fact should be kept, but the sentence as it currently stands is not Wikipedia-worthy. Ganesha811 (talk) 14:27, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
@Ganesha811: "great" is, as you say, a matter of opinion. The date is supported by more academic work; e.g. "about 2150 BC" is given in Dalley, Stephanie (2000), Myths from Mesopotamia : Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (revised edition ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 41, ISBN0-19-283589-0{{citation}}: |edition= has extra text (help), although the most complete surviving texts are from about 1,000 years later. Better would be something like "One of the oldest surviving works of literature is the Epic of Gilgamesh, first engraved on ancient Babylonian tablets about 4,000 years ago." This could be sourced from Dalley (2000) or other sources in the Gilgamesh article. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:21, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
@Ganesha811 and Peter coxhead: Sorry meant to reply a while ago, but then forgot about it. I had a few tabs open when I was rewriting that section and obviously copied the wrong reference. I got the information from this BBC source. I think "great" is meant to differentiate it from older texts that were more instructive or hymn like. I think it is worth mentioning and agree with Peters wording and source. I will change it now. AIRcorn(talk)07:02, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Homo
Hey everyone, either I got something wrong or the section etymology is not very clear on the issue if the Latin origin of Homo means also man in the sense of male? Because I dont think so and I think it is even further related to greek.
But in any sense this difference between "homo" and "man" (for male human) should be more clarified, its just not clear if they are related. Nsae Comp (talk) 08:27, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
The Sexuality and love section contains little or no information about the mating behaviour of the human primate. It is almost entirely sociological, psychological, and political in content. How many mates do humans have? On what basis do they choose mates? Do they pair-bond for life? How many offspring do they produce per mating cycle? Over what period? Parental care? Male/male competition for mates? Female/female competition? Female choice? Resources? Gifts? Sexual selection? Runaway sexual selection? Etc., etc., etc. There are of course some questions that can't be answered definitively, but there are many more that can, on a large-scale, general, world population level. Naturally, it's a political and emotional minefield, and that's obviously why the section is in the shape it's in. Heavenlyblue (talk) 06:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
The human life cycle section contains more biological information, this is focused on the psychological aspects (it is under Psychology). We are limited by what references say (until recently it was completely unreferenced) and space (it is an overview article on a broad subject). There are lots that could go in, but much is probably better off at the main articles. A lot of what you suggest is not easily answered and most answers will be extremely vague as to probably not be terribly useful. If you can bring some sources here that would make it easier to discern what could be included and whether it should be at the expense of some of what we have. AIRcorn(talk)07:55, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Biology Picture
The Biology picture of the human anatomy includes identification of all the major joints except the elbow (and maybe the neck). Where's the love for the elbow? SquashEngineer (talk) 17:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
There is a discussion here about adding a lead image to Child. I recently found the FAQ section about the selection of the lead image for Human which may or may not offer guidance for Child. Kolya Butternut (talk) 03:22, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
I do not think this is an appropriate notification, especially given this discussion...which mentions the lead image for the Human article. The above notification appears to seek commentary from those who agree with the poster. Obviously, the most neutral thing to do is alert associated WikiProjects and/or start an RfC. I suggested an RfC on the Child talk page.
The subject "Homo sapiens" redirects to this article. This article treats "human" and "Homo sapiens" as interchangeable. This is incorrect and factually problematic.
All dogs are mammals, but not all mammals are dogs. Homo sapiens are only one species of human, and it is incorrect to use the terms interchangeably. This article attempts to discuss humans generally, but does so in an inconsistent and illogical manner. For example, the art section refers to art created by H. erectus, as if this art can be reasonably attributed to a feature of H. sapiens. But in the preceding section about language, the article emphasizes how language is a unique feature of "humans" which gives the implication that all humans are capable of language (when in reality we have little to no basis to believe that language existed before H. sapiens). Two separate articles are needed, one for H. sapiens and one for humans generally. The current article seems to most closely align to the latter, but needs to be vastly improved to accomplish that in a way that is accurate and consistent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gekaapje (talk • contribs) 17:39, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Inappropriate results
When a user types in 'human' into the Wikipedia search tool, the second and third results under "Human" are inappropriate and rude for some people, is there a way to at least move them down the list? Calicopenguin1112 (talk) 18:38, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
This edit request to Human has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
Please add 'Bonobo' as member of family Hominidae is description of 'human'.
Please change: "They are the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina and—together with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—"
to read: "They are the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina and—together with bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—" JRB001 (talk) 02:51, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Not done Bonobos are one of two species of chimpanzee (genus Pan). "Together with" is speaking of each of the three other genera in the family Hominidae. Just as we don't list separately the two species of gorilla or the three of orangutan, we don't list the two chimp species separately. Crossroads-talk-03:59, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
More accurately, bonobos are an alleged species of the genus Pan. If we accept that bonobos constitute a distinct species, it's probably inaccurate to say they are a species of chimpanzee (which would probably be more akin to saying that lions are a species of tiger). The point is that there is not consensus as to the appropriate classification for "bonobos", be it separate species or subspecies of chimpanzee, and therefore drawing a distinction here would not serve a purpose. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gekaapje (talk • contribs) 03:00, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
The following claim is false and not backed up by the source: "although Islam is growing the most rapidly and likely to overtake Christianity by 2035". If you look at the pew data in the source provided, even in 2060 Christianity will be ahead of Islam and this article claims that Islam will only overtake Christianity in the mid-2070s: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/05/muslim-population-overtake-christian-birthrate-20-years
@Aircorn and @JoePhin, here's the text you're disagreeing about:
As early Homo sapiens dispersed, it encountered varieties of archaic humans both in Africa and in Eurasia, in Eurasia notably Homo neanderthalensis. Since 2010, evidence for gene flow between archaic and modern humans during the period of roughly 100,000 to 30,000 years ago has been discovered. This includes modern human admixture in Neanderthals, Neanderthal admixture in all modern humans outside Africa,[1][2]Denisova hominin admixture in Melanesians[3] as well as admixture from unnamed archaic humans to some Sub-Saharan African populations.[4]
I see some details in here that don't appear elsewhere in the text, e.g., "100,000 to 30,000 years ago" and "Melanesians". Perhaps it'd be a good idea to talk about this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
I think this is just a simple misunderstanding. I removed it because it was repeated under evolution (was a bit lazy with my edit summary). I believe Joe re-added it because they didn't realise that it was repeated in another section. I don't think either of us are suggesting it should be repeated twice. Since it is here though I don't think we need to go into anymore detail than we currently have in the evolution section (it is an overview article afterall). Not overly fussed if it is under evolution or history, although I prefer evolution personally. Aircorn(talk)23:51, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
@Aircorn:, no no, I was just confused by your summary; glancing at it, I think it's more or less represented in the evolution section. I might add a few snippets from the deleted text back into the evolution section if they aren't repeated completely. No worries! (P.S. I liked your cladogram, Aircorn, very nice work) Joe (talk) 02:04, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
Yeah I could have made a better edit summary. Make any changes you want to the paragraph. I see admixture is brought up again twice under biological variation so maybe some of that can be incorporated too. As for the clade diagram I can't take credit for that. I got it from the Human evolution article. Aircorn(talk)00:18, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
A note that this is what we are
Im sorry, blanket statement, for any inconvenience this discussion post may cause to the editors. I feel the need to enumerate my lack of qualifications but just know Im someone who enjoys reading wikipedia sometimes and have no experience editing it. I was wondering if it would be a good idea to make a note somewhere in this article that this page is about the type of organism the reader is. Not to say that the reader wouldn't probably already know that but i mean, they might be trying to settle a debate about what homo sapiens is or something i don't know, it's possible! JoshOzburn (talk) 13:39, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
It's inappropriate for articles to refer to itself or to its readers; see the Manual of Style. Besides, wouldn't we want the encyclopedia to still be accurate if read by an alien or post-human species? ;) -- Equivamp - talk13:59, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
Should the theory of consciousness arising from emergent phenomena within the nervous system be included?
Although it’s by no means fully accepted, nor is there rock solid proof beyond question to its validity, there may be value to including a short part on one of the more commonly accepted possibilities as to how consciousness arose, within the ‘Consciousness’ section. Although there is no clear consensus on the scientific theory of consciousness arising from emergent phenonmena, the general trend seems to be prevailing in that direction. There is a very wide variety of sources available, of varying levels of credibility, in the scientific literature to support such an assertion. Thoughts? Engineer of Souls (talk) 23:56, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
I wrote a more exact data about the world population in 2019, from a newer and better source: UNO, and a Sir came and deleted everything. Don't keep deleting valuable information. Bitholov.
fat — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.54.177.234 (talk) 20:56, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
Throughout history, humans have altered their appearance by wearing clothing.[1] It has been suggested humans started wearing clothing when they migrated north away from Africa's warm climate.[2]
See these for the counter-point: [20][21]. Gilligan argues that clothing wasn't routinely worn until the Neolithic, except in extremely cold environments where it was necessary for survival, and that for most of human history other forms of bodily adornment (paint, ornaments, etc.) would have been more common. – Joe (talk) 20:20, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
I've read arguments as old as 100,000 years ago. Point is, there's a huge debate on the history of clothing, which is far too extensive to accurately parse through given the amount of space it deserves in this article. We can leave that at history of clothing and textiles and for here leave it at, "Throughout history, humans have altered their appearance by wearing clothing" and then move onto recorded history and the world of today User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk00:57, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
Done, thanks! --ElHef (Meep?) 04:46, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Done Chrisrus (talk) 04:32, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Proposed Photo
Established Photo
Thank you — 13:02, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
What I think it would be better
What actually is
Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Cannolis (talk) 15:32, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Done I added it as:
Not done: Source provided does not appear to be reliable EvergreenFir (talk) 07:17, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
Bushman-people.jpg Proposed Lead Picture
Paved path on Longevity Hill in Summer Palace, Beijing—proposed lead picture
An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.
Chinese Family in modern habitat. A (man + woman + boy + girl)
Chinese Family in modern habitat. B (man + woman + boy + girl)
White Family in modern habitat. (man + woman + boy + girl)
African Family in modern habitat. (man + woman + boy + girl)
Group of indigenous pacific islanders in traditional habitat. (elderly man + woman + elderly woman + boy + girl)
white American family (man + woman + boy + girl)
Large group of humans. (mixed group).jpg)
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b (citations to reliable sources): 
Not done for obvious reasons. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 01:49, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
![[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Habitat-homo-sapiens.svg){kind=link}
![[6]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Homo-Stammbaum,_Version_Stringer-en.svg){kind=link}
