[Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

[Lynn Raw]

John, 

Ernst Mayr's 1969 definition in Priciples of Systematic Zoology, p. 92, seems pretty logical, especially his recommendation regarding the size of the gap being in inverse ratio to the size of the taxon.

Lynn

Sent from my iPad

> On 30 May 2018, at 16:01, John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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> Nurturing Nuance while Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some Years, 1987-2018.