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by amanaplanacanal 1103 days ago
Are we only calling Homo Sapiens human? Some how I got the idea that all of Homo was human.
3 comments

The Homoninid family tree has gotten fairly confusing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape#Changes_in_taxonomy_and_te...

You will often see mention of Hominin (Homo and Pan (chimpanzees), I think) as well, where you would have once heard Hominid.

Hominin doesn't include chimpanzees, but all members of the human tree after the split from chimpanzees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae
Thanks! I couldn't remember the details and was trying to reconstruct it from the bio-Latin. :-)
According to an archeologist I know the preferred terminology for non-sapiens sapiens members of Homo is "Archaic Humans".
I had the opposite idea: colloquially, "human" is us, homo sapiens, and hominid would be our ancestors and closest relations.
There was a shift in how the word 'hominid' was used around the 1990s, largely due to the introduction of genetic classification if I understand correctly. Hominids (humans and close ancestors) used to be considered distinct from Pongoids, which were basically all other great apes including chimpanzees and bonobos. That taxonomy was retired, and all great apes are now considered hominids.