[Taxacom] Homo sapiens

[Michael A. Ivie]

The history of defining extant Homo sapiens is a sad one, one that 
taxonomy does well to forget.  It has mostly been the preview of racists 
trying to subdivide humanity to support some superior race theory or 
other.  The Germans did some of this during the Nazi era, and others 
during colonial and slave periods. Not really something to delve into.  
There is no taxonomic confusion on who is human and who is not in the 
extant population, so such a redescription is not necessary.

On 1/13/2016 4:18 PM, Doug Yanega wrote:
> On 1/13/16 3:04 PM, Thomas McCabe wrote:
>> More recent publications of
>> primate taxonomy in English available to me refer to Linneaus’ 
>> definition.
>> Can anyone direct me to a more recent formal revision?
>>
> Most species, including our own, have no "formal" description outside 
> of the original description. Given that we've only got descriptions 
> for fewer than 2 million of the 10-50 million extant species, we've 
> got a lot of work yet to do before we can go around re-describing 
> things a second time. ;-)
>
> That being said, if you were to examine the descriptions, in the 
> paleonotological literature, of *other species* in the genus Homo, you 
> are likely to find that when those other species are diagnosed, the 
> authors may have listed certain features in explicit contrast with the 
> same features as they appear in H. sapiens - you could accumulate a 
> number of formal characters used to recognize H. sapiens, in this manner.
>
> Sincerely,
>

-- 
__________________________________________________

Michael A. Ivie, Ph.D., F.R.E.S.

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