Introduction
Homo sapiens is the species commonly referred to as humans. The species evolved in Africa more than 300,000 years ago and is the only living representative of the genus Homo. Humans have a gracile body build compared to earlier members of the genus Homo. All humans have a chin and a large brain that is highly developed. This brain allowed for the evolution of behavioral modernity and for continuous social and technological innovations to take place that allow Homo sapiens to survive in all habitats.
Definition
Homo sapiens (Linnæus 1758). Species to which all living modern humans belong. While fossils closely resembling living humans are often referred to as “anatomically modern Homo sapiens,” earlier members of the lineage are sometimes termed “archaic Homo sapiens.”
Key Issues/Current Debates/Future Directions/Examples
Morphology
Homo sapiens around the world share a number of derived characteristics (Lieberman 2008). These features were not present in previous hominins...
References
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Further Reading
Stringer, C. 2011. The origin of our species. London: Allen Lane.
Stringer, C. 2016. The origin and evolution of Homo sapiens. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371 (1698): 20150237–20150237. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0237.
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De Groote, I., Stringer, C. (2018). Homo Sapiens . In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_693-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_693-2
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