[Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

[John Grehan]

Ken's observation makes the point that the breadth of a genus and higher
category is entirely arbitrary and irrational.

John Grehan

On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 9:39 AM, Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
>       In the conclusions, he says: "By logical extension, hypothetical
> neanderthalensis and heidelbergensis clades, regardless of their
> relationship to a sapiens clade, should be regarded as separate genera."
>
>
>       I do not agree with that at all.  This is another example of the
> oversplitting that many anthropologists have long practiced, and it should
> be discouraged, not encouraged.
>
>                 --------------Ken
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of John
> Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 30, 2018 7:59 AM
> *To:* taxacom
> *Subject:* [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens
>
> For anyone interested in such questions, see article at
>
> http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2016vol94/Schwartz/26963221.pdf
>
>
> Abstract below
>
> What constitutes Homo sapiens? Morphology versus received wisdom
>
> Although Linnaeus coined Homo sapiens in 1735, it was Blumenbach forty
> years later who provided the first morphological definition of the species.
> Since humans were not then allowed to be ante-Diluvian, his effort applied
> to the genus, as well. After the Feldhofer Grotto Neanderthal disproved
> this creationist notion, and human–fossil hunting became legitimate, new
> specimens were allocated either to sapiens or new species within Homo, or
> even to new species within new genera. Yet as these taxonomic acts
> reflected the morphological differences between specimens, they failed to
> address the question: What constitutes H. sapiens? When in 1950 Mayr
> collapsed all human fossils into Homo, he not only denied humans a diverse
> evolutionary past, he also shifted the key to identifying its species from
> morphology to geological age – a practice most paleoanthropologists still
> follow. Thus, for example, H. erectus is the species that preceded H.
> sapiens, and H. sapiens is the species into which H. erectus morphed. In
> order to deal with a growing morass of morphologically dissimilar
> specimens, the non-taxonomic terms “archaic” (AS) and “anatomically modern”
> (AMS) were introduced to distinguish between the earlier and later versions
> of H. sapiens, thereby making the species impossible to define. In
> attempting to disentangle fact from scenario, I begin from the beginning,
> trying to delineate features that may be distinctive of extant humans (ES),
> and then turning to the fossils that have been included in the species.
> With the exception of Upper Paleolithic humans – e.g. from Cro-Magnon,
> Dolni Vestonice, Mladeč – I argue that many specimens regarded as AMS, and
> all those deemed AS, are not H. sapiens. The features these AMS do share
> with ES suggest the existence of a sapiens clade. Further, restudy of
> near-recent fossils, especially from southwestern China (~11-14.5 ka),
> reinforces what discoveries such as H. floresiensis indicate: “If it’s
> recent, it’s not necessarily H. sapiens”.
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> Nurturing Nuance while Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some Years, 1987-2018.
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