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Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

(news.asu.edu)
273 points geox | 2 comments | 17 Jun 24 21:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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1. butlike ◴[18 Jun 24 15:09 UTC] No.40718682[source]▶
Human === Homo sapien _sapien_. Homo Sapiens are a different thing
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2. AlotOfReading ◴[18 Jun 24 15:39 UTC] No.40719080[source]▶
H. s. sapiens is not universally accepted either. As a practical matter, it'd raise a lot more eyebrows in an actual conversation with anthropologists than the informal usage of humans = genus Homo I mention above.