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Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

(news.asu.edu)
273 points geox | 1 comments | 17 Jun 24 21:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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cpncrunch ◴[18 Jun 24 04:25 UTC] No.40714063[source]▶
News article says humans, but earliest human (homo sapiens) was around 300kya. The actual paper uses the word hominids rather than humans.
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AlotOfReading ◴[18 Jun 24 07:11 UTC] No.40714924[source]▶
The word human is commonly used for both modern humans and members of the entire genus Homo. Hominids is a more general superset that isn't strictly correct here. The term hominin is more appropriate in this context and what they actually use in the abstract.

In my opinion though, "human" is the better word here for conveying the right mix of informality without implying the specific semantics of "Hominini sans Pan".

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MattPalmer1086 ◴[18 Jun 24 07:24 UTC] No.40714996[source]▶
Is it?

This is literally the first time Ive seen the word human applied to other hominids. I see many discussions about neanderthals and denisovians and so on. I have never seen them referred to as human.

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1. tshaddox ◴[18 Jun 24 13:09 UTC] No.40717417[source]▶
Usage is definitely mixed, but I’m surprised you haven’t encountered this. From Wikipedia:

> Although some scientists equate the term "humans" with all members of the genus Homo, in common usage it generally refers to Homo sapiens, the only extant member. All other members of the genus Homo, which are now extinct, are known as archaic humans, and the term "modern human" is used to distinguish Homo sapiens from archaic humans.