The changing face of genus Homo

✍ Scribed by Bernard Wood; Mark Collard

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 208 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1060-1538
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6505(1999)8:6<195::aid-evan1>3.0.co;2-2

✦ Synopsis

The genus Homo was established by Carolus Linnaeus 1 as part of the binomial system he introduced in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. As conceived by Linnaeus, the genus Homo subsumed two species; the name Homo sapiens was attached to the more diurnal of the two. Within H. sapiens, Linnaeus recognized six groups. Four of these are geographical variants drawn from the four continents, Africa, America, Asia and Europe, that were known to Linnaeus. The other two groups, namely the wild and the monstrous men, are of sociohistorical rather than biological interest. The same is true of the second species, also called Homo sylvestris, Homo troglodytes which is part myth and part orangutan.