Current Issues in Human Taxonomy
Generally, humans are considered the only surviving representatives of the genus Homo. Some scientists, however, consider other members of the hominid family (chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas) to be so close to humans genetically that they should be classified as Homo.
Scientists have also debated whether any other branches of Homo, such as Neanderthals, should be classified as separate species or subspecies of H. sapiens. These distinctions are connected with two competing theories of human origins, the more common recent single-origin hypothesis (that modern humans represent a distinct gene pool) and the multiregional hypothesis (that modern humans spreading from Africa interbred with local Homo populations). Modern humans have some genes that originally arose in archaic human populations, composing perhaps 5% of our genetic inheritance. (For example, see microcephalin.)
Species within the genus Homo are generally regarded as human. Australopithecines, too, are often referred to as human. Lay people sometimes ask whether the species other than H. sapiens were truly human. Were Neanderthals, for example, actually human or just close to human? This question makes sense in an essentialist philosophy, in which humans have an essential identity, and in which Neanderthals either did or did not share that identity. In religious context, the question might be phrased as "Did Neanderthals have souls?" In natural science, however, the term "human" is seen as a category whose boundaries humans themselves determine. The question, in this context, is not whether this or that species had the quality of being human in some absolute sense, but whether we choose to define the category of human as including that species.
Read more about this topic: Human Taxonomy
Famous quotes containing the words current, issues and/or human:
“I perceived that to express those impressions, to write that essential book, which is the only true one, a great writer does not, in the current meaning of the word, invent it, but, since it exists already in each one of us, interprets it. The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The “universal moments” of child rearing are in fact nothing less than a confrontation with the most basic problems of living in society: a facing through one’s children of all the conflicts inherent in human relationships, a clarification of issues that were unresolved in one’s own growing up. The experience of child rearing not only can strengthen one as an individual but also presents the opportunity to shape human relationships of the future.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)