Talk:Homo/Archive 3

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Move. Jafeluv (talk) 13:30, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Homo (genus) → Homo — This appears to be the primary topic for the term Homo. Homo (genus) got 39000 pageviews in January, compared to 9400 for Homo, 5000 for HOMO/LUMO and 50 for the Swedish ombudsman against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. Ucucha 04:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Homo → Homo (disambiguation)


 * Support I have to agree that the genus appears to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.--Labattblueboy (talk) 04:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose usage on Wikipedia does not show primary topic, only Wikipedia usage. In North America, I'm pretty sure it means "homosexual", unless you go grocery shopping, then it means "homogenized milk". 70.29.210.242 (talk) 05:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - Wikipedia is an international reference work not bound by uncited claims concerning an individual country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Odea (talk • contribs) 08:30, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment in relation to the US, certainly recent usage is more about gays than anything else, considering the firestorm over Dontaskdonttell. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 05:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no disagreement that homo is also used as a pejorative term for homosexuality but the stats appear to indicate that people are not making searches on that basis. A search of reliable sources also appears to show the genus is the more prominent term. --Labattblueboy (talk) 14:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Support -- Quiddity (talk) 21:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Support. The genus is the primary encyclopedic usage even if not the most common in the language.  (cf. Nice).  —   AjaxSmack   20:03, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Support, as per nom. —innotata (Talk • Contribs) 21:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Support as per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC - UtherSRG (talk) 15:55, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Support - per nom. Rlendog (talk) 01:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Genus age citation
Hi there. I ran across a "citation needed" tag for the age of the Homo genus in this article. I looked at the Human evolution article and found two references for an age of 2.3 to 2.4 myo. I added the two citations from Human evolution here, and changed the text from 2.5 to 2.3-2.4. --Smoggyrob | Talk 23:09, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Why is the title italic?
Just curious :) Iokerapid (talk) 11:26, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Scientific convention: scientific names of genera, species and subspecies (but not higher taxa) are all put in italics. WP has a special code to make the article title (or part of it) show in italics, as in this case, which is the name of a genus.  Richard New Forest (talk) 13:17, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Homo Habilis
Hello, I think it would be appropriate to change the "Lived when" column in the Species'table for the Homo Habilis. Although exact dates are not clear, 1.7 million years is clearly an underestimation. For example, the Wikipedia entry for the Homo Habilis says "2.3 to 1.4" million years ago, and the Britannica web page says "2 to 1.5 million years ago" (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/270419/Homo-habilis). This would mean that the Homo Habilis should appear first in the table, as the oldest member of the Homo genus. Please let me know what you think.(DanteEspinoza1989 (talk) 18:37, 2 April 2010 (UTC))


 * you are perfectly right. H. habilis is the earliest member of the Homo genus almost by defintion. The article should go into more detail on the history of how paleoanthropoogists have drawn the line between Homo and Australopithecus. The idea, afaik, was that by definition the appearance of tools marked the appearance of the genus. I.e. the line was not drawn on (barely attested) physiological grounds. Now it appears that there is A. garhi which also had tools so the line between the genera is even more arbitrary than was originally believed. Nevertheless, H. habilis is the first Homo, anything earlier is labelled Australopithecus. --dab (𒁳) 11:44, 3 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for answering, I will procede with the changes then.(DanteEspinoza1989 (talk) 16:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC))

Edit request from DanteEspinoza1989, 4 April 2010
editsemiprotected

I would like to propose a change in the Homo article, specifically in the "Comparative table of Homo species" in the "Species" section of the article. In the third row ("Homo Habilis"), the "Lived when" column should be changed, since 1.7 million years is clearly an understimation according to these sources: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/270419/Homo-habilis (2 million years) and the Wikipedia entry for the Homo Habilis (2.3 million years). This would mean that the Homo Habilis should appear first in the table, as the oldest member of the Homo genus. 1.7 should be changed to 2 million years ago. The 1.4 estimation should stay the same. (DanteEspinoza1989 (talk) 17:47, 4 April 2010 (UTC))

DanteEspinoza1989 (talk) 17:47, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

of course -- sorry, I did not realize you were not yet able to edit the sprotected article. I will do that edit for you. You should be able to edit yourself after you do a handful of edits to other articles. --dab (𒁳) 19:49, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

In fact, the table is at Template:Homo which is not protected and whih you are welcome to edit. --dab (𒁳) 19:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

"Homo sapiens" trouble
I was going through this and the related pages, and found there to be all kinds of wierdness in the Homo sapiens related pages. First of all just plain Homo sapiens redirects to human. Then Homo sapiens sapiens redirects to anatomically modern humans. In the middle of all this, there ends up being no sound way to get to Homo sapiens idaltu. I finally settled on having Homo sapiens in this page direct you to anatomically modern humans.

Beyond that, more work is needed, and I think that the community needs to decide how to handle this. For one, the extent of "Homo sapiens" is subject to some controversy, and that should be detailed in an article under the title of Homo sapiens. For some, Homo sapiens is just modern humans. For others, it is expanded to include "archaic Homo sapiens" and the Neanderthals. I gather that the most common use is the one represented here in Wikipedia, but issue of just what Homo sapiens is is enough to justify its own article. (It should include a link to human in its first sentence, but should not just plain redirect there.)

EMS | Talk 21:42, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That's what I was trying to say recently, in the 5th comment at Talk:Human. Bloomin' confusing! Expert cleanup required. -- Quiddity (talk) 02:22, 14 April 2010 (UTC)


 * And if I had been around to vote on your proposal, I would have opposed it too! Human is a wonderful article, and is appropriate under that title.  I would also note that its taxonomy infobox refers to humans as "Homo sapiens sapiens" [emphasis mine].  So IMO, Homo sapiens sapiens should redirect there.  Maybe the short term solution is to switch the redirects, but no doubt someone would switch them back (or at least the Homo sapiens one) if we did that.


 * That is why I figure that we need an article for Homo sapiens itself, stating what that designation is and nothing the controversy and ambiguity that surrounds it. Maybe I will take a crack at it soon, but it will be something of a mind dump and not well referenced if I do it. --EMS | Talk 04:59, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * (I didn't propose anything. I just made the 5th comment in that thread, stating that I had been confused by the mixture of terminology used in our articles... ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 05:03, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Homo Sapiens page
I have a start for a Homo sapiens page at User:Ems57fcva/sandbox/Homo_sapiens. Comments and improvements will be appreciated. EMS | Talk 19:27, 14 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I appreciate the idea. But this shouldn't become so much a new article but a merge target for the existing anatomically modern humans and archaic Homo sapiens. Once we have a dedicated article on the full 200ky of H. sapiens history (which happens to be marginalized in Human as 97% of that history is in the Stone Age and as such in human prehistory), we do not require a separate article on anatomically modern humans any longer (in fact, anatomically modern humans was the attempt to create a Homo sapiens article without needing to change the Homo sapiens redirect. --dab (𒁳) 12:45, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

"Spacial and Time distribution"
This image should be specifically marked as conforming to the "Out of Africa" theory; while those who are familiar with both theories will recognise this right away, those who are unfamiliar that there are competing theories will take this image to be a factual representation of human evolution, which it is not (well, at least not until the multiple origin theory is proven beyond all doubt to be wrong, which hasn't happened yet). I'm unable to alter it myself, but I thought someone who can alter the article should add a little caveat to the caption. 99.126.241.110 (talk) 20:41, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Homo Erectus
The homo erectus article (and the various subspecies articles) gives no data on weight, while the table in this article gives 60 kg as a typical weight. Given the typical height noted, that creates an average BMI of about 17.5. Was homo erectus really anorexic by modern aesthetic standards? Given the various information we have about skeletal structure, I'm more inclined to believe this is spurious data, but does anyone know for sure? Rhialto (talk) 12:00, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 68.227.225.58, 25 September 2011
Please update the reference to H. gautengensis. H. gautengensis lived between 2 million and 600,000 years ago. A partial skull was discovered in 1977 in South Africa's Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg*, not May, 2010.

In May, 2010, anthropologist Dr. Darren Curnoe, of the UNSW School of Biological, Earth Environmental Sciences identified and named the partial skull H. gautengensis, after having undertaken a restoration and fresh reconstruction of the fossilized skull.**

Please check the two cites for verification. Thank you.
 * Wikipedia.com website, accessed September 24, 2011: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_gautengensis
 * The University of New South Wales website, accessed September 24, 2011 : http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/new-species-of-human/

68.227.225.58 (talk) 00:27, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Where should we add this information? I can't see any obvious place; please could you re-request, saying exactly which part should be changed. Thanks,  Chzz  ► 04:20, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Table Editing
The date for the discovery of homo antecessor appears to be incorrect (should be 1994, not 1997). However, it is not clear how to edit this table, as it does not appear within the "edit" frame for the article. Ryoung 122 18:53, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This text is in the template Homo, there are links just above it to "view-talk-edit" click the edit link and you can edit the template. Keith D (talk) 11:15, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Italicized Title?
I don't Wiki often but I notice the title of this page is italicized for no apparent reason. Motion to revert? 66.108.74.225 (talk) 06:47, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I could be wrong on this, but I think it's italicised because it is the name of a genus. (Sub)species names and genuses are always presented in italics on Wikipedia AFAIK.  Alphathon  /'æɫfə.θɒn/ ( talk ) 16:22, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That's correct. Back in 2009, several WikiProjects had a huge RfC over whether italicized titles were permissible. The Tree of Life members fought long and hard, and since there was consensus among our entire project, we implemented a new policy on article naming conventions where the genus and species are always italicized. Thus, the Tree of Life was the first project to officially accept italicized titling. I'm not sure if any other WikiProjects have reached intra-project consensus yet, but that's irrelevant. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 18:56, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit request
The second paragraph contains "H. Ergaster" and "H. Erectus". These should be in italics and the first letter of the specific epithet should not be capitalized. How does this happen if anyone knowledgeable about the subject is writing? It makes Wikipedia look absurd and amateurish, at least with heavily scientifically based articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.165.214.238 (talk) 02:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

And I'm sure it confuses the hell out of people who don't have taxonomic training. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.165.214.238 (talk) 02:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I guess whoever contributed to this article isn't interested in conveying information accurately. My hat is off to you. Good job! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.112.230.231 (talk) 04:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Fixed. In order to attract the attention of someone who can edit protected articles, please use the Edit semi-protected template at the start of your edit request. Also, snide insults don't help. We're all just volunteers here. - UtherSRG (talk) 09:27, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I apologize for the snide insult. I realize it does nothing to help, and I also realize that everyone here is a volunteer. I was in a bad mood and I just couldn't fathom, at that moment, how someone who contributed to this article overlooked details. But I realize people are busy (part of the reason for my bad mood). Thank you for fixing this detail. I'm a taxonomist (botany) and details (or lack of) sometimes get under my skin. Again, thank you and apologies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.112.230.231 (talk) 05:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Taxobox
Right now this page uses Template:Automatic taxobox. I propose we use Template:taxobox and enter the information manually, like articles like Ape use. The reason being that this automatically generated box is ommitting information:
 * infraordo = Simiiformes
 * parvordo = Catarrhini
 * superfamilia = Hominoidea

This information is part of the ape box, it is the steps between the Primate order and the Hominidae family. Shouldn't recognition of infra/parv orders and super families be as important as the recognizing the tribe and sub-tribe?

The subfamily of Homininae is also missing from the automatically generated box. I am uncertain why this is. If you look at Hominina, it also uses the automatic taxobox, yet it does display the Super and Sub families (although it too neglects the infra/parv orders). Does anyone know how the automatic box works in this case? I think in all cases it would be good to list all the steps so people don't remain ignorant of all classifications and terms. Y12J (talk) 01:18, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It is correct for that information to be missing. We don't include every step down from Animalia - we only include the major taxa down to the step just above the article's subject, then the minor taxa down from there. - UtherSRG (talk) 07:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Dang, didn't know this, it's too bad we can't make an exception because when there's 5 things that begin with "Homin", having them regularly all shown together helps prevent people from mixing them up. Y12J (talk) 07:03, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Read the articles. The information you want is in them, and it is all together in Hominidae. - UtherSRG (talk) 08:35, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Naming inconsistency
Is it just me or this article has some naming inconsistency? Sometimes it writes "Homo X", sometimes it just "H. X" in one sentence. Or maybe there is some rules on when to use "H." or "Homo" which I don't know.

-- Rv77ax (talk) 07:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * This is standard practice in scientific writing when dealing with multiple instances of the usage of a genus. It's more useful when dealing with polysyllabic genus names like Paranthropus and Australopithecus. Much easier to write P. boisei and A. afarensis after establishing what the "P." and "A." stand for. It's even more interesting when you throw in another genus that starts with the same letter, like Ardipithecus. Then, if you mention both Ardipithecus and Australopithecus multiple times in the article (in a species name), you'd probably use Au. and Ar., although if you only ever use one of them multiple times, but mention the other genus once, you'd still only abbreviate as A.. As long as the context is clear, these abbreviations are allowed and even expected. - UtherSRG (talk) 09:53, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Several editing suggestions
I am a new member and so cannot yet make the changes myself. However, I am a paleoanthropologist, and have found several problems with this page that need to be revised.

The sentences regarding the probable ancestor to Homo should be revised, because several species, not just A. garhi, have been suggested to be the ancestor to Homo. I suggest the following: "Several species, including Australopithecus garhi, Au. sediba, Au. africanus and Au. afarensis, have been proposed as the direct ancestor of the Homo lineage (Pickering et al., 2011, Science; Asfaw et al., 1999, Science;). Each of these species have morphological features that align them with Homo, but there is no consensus on which actually gave rise to Homo."

Also in this first paragraph, the mention of Homo gautengensis should be removed. First, it is irrelevant to the topic, and second, H. gautengensis is not accepted by most researchers in the field. If the sentence cannot be removed, it should at least be corrected. Homo gautengensis was not discovered in 2010, it was only named then. The species is based entirely fossils that had been previously excavated, and which had already been assigned to other taxa, including Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo. The author of the paper assigned fossils to this taxon in some cases without ever seeing those fossils, making this assignment especially dubious.

While the comment about Au. sediba's diet is correct, it is also completely irrelevant to a discussion of Homo. No comment was made in that paper about the possible diet of Homo.

The article mentions Homo georgicus, another species name which has actually been deemphasized and is no longer in use by the authors who originally named the taxon. I suggest that it is either removed or strongly edited.

Shewalkslightly (talk) 16:01, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've requested that the page be unprotected. Should the request be granted, please go ahead and edit the article, if there are no objections. If there are, please work to forge a consensus first. -- Rrburke (talk) 20:39, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not protected now. Marking as answered to get it off the request list.  RudolfRed (talk) 20:14, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

OMG
Really,

You have this long winded liberal/scientific article and fail to mention that Homo is slang for gay?

Not even once? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.202.119.228 (talk) 20:12, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * There's a Homo (disambiguation) link at the top of the page where it's mentioned. Th4n3r (talk) 22:25, 31 January 2013 (UTC)


 * And all this because of sheer coincidence. The words aren't even in the same language. "Homo" for "human" is Latin, "homo" for "the same" is Greek. If I could go backwards in time about five millennia or so, I would fix this. J I P  &#124; Talk 23:16, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Link trouble
The link out to "Mikko's Phylogeny Archive" doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps the more general link (http://www.helsinki.fi/~mhaaramo/) should be used...? Jonathon Keeney (talk) 00:10, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Another tree diagram needed
We need a diagram of the branches Within this genus, not just one that shows how this genus attaches to the the other great apes. Let's choose one from the commons or do a graphics request for a new one. Chrisrus (talk) 23:54, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Synonyms
The taxobox should have a list of synonyms, including these: http://fossilworks.org/?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=40901 If the list is too long, it can be made collapsible, like in Tyrannosaurus. FunkMonk (talk) 15:44, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed. I see that Pithecanthropus is in that list. – Wbm1058 (talk) 16:25, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Homo Gracilis?
The name Homo Gracilis popped into my head from somewhere so naturally I went to Homo Gracilis to read about it. No such article. But surely it is at least mentioned at Homo, and I can create a redirect page... No. But a generalised search brings up List of World Heritage Sites in Ethiopia where, at Lower Valley of the Omo, there is a sourced (from UNESCO) reference that uses the term. But nowhere else?? Except a Google Books reference to 'Ecce Homo!: A Lexicon of Man' by Luigi Romeo which says that, unlike Homo Robustus ('a humanized Australopithecus '), this name has not been adopted by Palaeontologists. So does anyone know what was really found in the Omo Valley, by whom, and when? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:25, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not an expert, but the only place I've seen "gracile" applied is to the australopithecines. "Gracilis" is used extensively in paleontology nomenclature, but I've never heard it applied to genus Homo. – Paine EllsworthC LIMAX ! 03:10, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Evidence or interbreeding limited?
Would someone please help clarify for me the line in the introduction that reads:

there is evidence of limited interbreeding of archaic and modern humans

The evidence is presumably almost by definition limited so the statement should founded on a means of comparison. This is not referred to so can anyone tell me what it was? If there is none then the word limited should be deleted.

LookingGlass (talk) 15:08, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * You may find out what the means of comparisons are when you click on the link provided, which takes you to the article about the archaic human admixture with modern humans. Not sure what you mean when you say "The evidence is presumably almost by definition limited", since the statement in the article refers to the "limited interbreeding" and not to the "evidence" as being "limited".  At any rate, in my humble opinion the removal of "limited" would not be an improvement. – Paine EllsworthC LIMAX ! 17:22, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * D'oh! Thanks.  FWIW, by limited evidence, I meant e.g In March 2013, new data from the late-Neanderthal jaw from the Mezzena rockshelter indicated possible interbreeding.  A jawbone is a limited sample.  Historically, finding additional material has often changed existing analysis.   That is not the same as saying that future discoveries will not simply extend or reinforce current analyes simply that siuch a thing is not unheard of, although at every point in history certainty has been a feature.  Btw I remember something about the Moors in Spain that despite historical records of wide scale interbreeding today there is no genetic evidence of this in the population.  LookingGlass (talk) 19:13, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

There is an RFC that may affect this page
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)?

Please feel free to comment there. SPACKlick (talk) 16:39, 20 March 2015 (UTC)