A number of varieties of ''

Homo ''Homo'' () is the genus that emerged in the (otherwise extinct) genus ''Australopithecus'' that encompasses the extant species ''Homo sapiens'' ( modern humans), plus several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely relate ...

'' are grouped into the broad category of archaic humans in the period that precedes and is contemporary to the emergence of the earliest

early modern humans Early modern human (EMH) or anatomically modern human (AMH) are terms used to distinguish ''Homo sapiens'' (the only extant Hominina species) that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans from extin ...

(''Homo sapiens'') around 300 ka.

Omo-Kibish I The Omo remains are a collection of homininThis article quotes historic texts that use the terms 'hominid' and 'hominin' with meanings that may be different from their modern usages. This is because several revisions in classifying the great apes h ...

(Omo I) from southern

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

( 195 or 233 ka), the remains from

Jebel Irhoud Jebel Irhoud or Adrar n Ighoud ( zgh, ⴰⴷⵔⴰⵔ ⵏ ⵉⵖⵓⴷ, Adrar n Iɣud; ar, جبل إيغود, žbəl iġud), is an archaeological site located just north of the locality known as Tlet Ighoud, approximately south-east of the cit ...

in Morocco (about 315 ka) and

Florisbad Florisbad is a health resort 45 km northwest of Bloemfontein and 47 km south-west of Brandfort Brandfort, officially renamed Winnie Mandela in 2021, is a small agricultural town in the central Free State province of South Africa, about ...

in South Africa (259 ka) are among the earliest remains of ''Homo sapiens''. The term typically includes ''

Homo neanderthalensis Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an Extinction, extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ag ...

'' (430 ± 25 ka),

Denisovan The Denisovans or Denisova hominins ) are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human that ranged across Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. Denisovans are known from few physical remains and consequently, most of what is known ...

s, ''

Homo rhodesiensis ''Homo rhodesiensis'' is the species name proposed by Arthur Smith Woodward (1921) to classify Kabwe 1 (the "Kabwe skull" or "Broken Hill skull", also "Rhodesian Man"), a Middle Stone Age fossil recovered from a cave at Broken Hill, or Kabwe, No ...

'' (300–125 ka), ''

Homo heidelbergensis ''Homo heidelbergensis'' (also ''H. sapiens heidelbergensis''), sometimes called Heidelbergs, is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene. It was subsumed as a subspecies of ''H. erectus'' in ...

'' (600–200 ka), ''

Homo naledi '' Homo naledi'' is an extinct species of archaic human discovered in 2013 in the Rising Star Cave, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa dating to the Middle Pleistocene 335,000–236,000 years ago. The initial discovery comprises 1,550 specimen ...

'', ''

Homo ergaster ''Homo ergaster'' is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Africa in the Early Pleistocene. Whether ''H. ergaster'' constitutes a species of its own or should be subsumed into ''Homo erectus, H. erectus'' is an ongoin ...

'', ''

Homo antecessor ''Homo antecessor'' (Latin "pioneer man") is an Extinction, extinct species of archaic human recorded in the Spanish Archaeological Site of Atapuerca, Sierra de Atapuerca, a productive archaeological site, from 1.2 to 0.8 million years ago durin ...

'', and ''

Homo habilis ''Homo habilis'' ("handy man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa about 2.31 million years ago to 1.65 million years ago (mya). Upon species description in 1964, ''H. habilis'' was highly ...

''. There is no universal consensus on this terminology, and varieties of "archaic humans" are included under the binomial name of either ''Homo sapiens'' or ''

Homo erectus ''Homo erectus'' (; meaning "upright man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Several human species, such as '' H. heidelbergensis'' and '' H. antecessor' ...

'' by some authors. Archaic humans had a brain size averaging 1,200 to 1,400 cubic centimeters, which overlaps with the range of modern humans. Archaics are distinguished from anatomically modern humans by having a thick skull, prominent

supraorbital ridge The brow ridge, or supraorbital ridge known as superciliary arch in medicine, is a bony ridge located above the eye sockets of all primates. In humans, the eyebrows are located on their lower margin. Structure The brow ridge is a nodule or crest ...

s (brow ridges) and the lack of a prominent

chin The chin is the forward pointed part of the anterior mandible (List_of_human_anatomical_regions#Regions, mental region) below the lower lip. A fully developed human skull has a chin of between 0.7 cm and 1.1 cm. Evolution The presence of a we ...

Anatomically modern humans Early modern human (EMH) or anatomically modern human (AMH) are terms used to distinguish ''Homo sapiens'' (the only extant Hominina species) that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans from extin ...

appear around 300,000 years ago in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, and 70,000 years ago (see

Toba catastrophe theory The Youngest Toba eruption was a supervolcano eruption that occurred around 74,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It is one of the Earth's largest known explosive eruptions. The Toba catastrophe theory hol ...

), gradually supplanting the "archaic" human varieties. Non-modern varieties of ''Homo'' are certain to have survived until after 30,000 years ago, and perhaps until as recently as 12,000 years ago. Which of these, if any, are included under the term "archaic human" is a matter of definition and varies among authors. Nonetheless, according to recent

genetic studies Genetic analysis is the overall process of studying and researching in fields of science that involve genetics and molecular biology. There are a number of applications that are developed from this research, and these are also considered parts of ...

modern humans Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...

may have bred with "at least two groups" of archaic humans:

Neanderthals Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an Extinction, extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ag ...

and

Denisovans The Denisovans or Denisova hominins ) are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human that ranged across Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. Denisovans are known from few physical remains and consequently, most of what is known ...

. Other studies have cast doubt on admixture being the source of the shared genetic markers between archaic and modern humans, pointing to an ancestral origin of the traits which originated 500,000–800,000 years ago.

Terminology and definition

The category archaic human lacks a single, agreed definition. According to one definition, ''Homo sapiens'' is a single species comprising several subspecies that include the archaics and modern humans. Under this definition, modern humans are referred to as ''Homo sapiens sapiens'' and archaics are also designated with the prefix "''Homo'' ''sapiens''". For example, the Neanderthals are ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis'', and ''Homo heidelbergensis'' is ''Homo sapiens heidelbergensis''. Other taxonomists prefer not to consider archaics and modern humans as a single species but as several different species. In this case the standard taxonomy is used, i.e. ''Homo rhodesiensis'', or ''Homo neanderthalensis''. The evolutionary dividing lines that separate modern humans from archaic humans and archaic humans from ''Homo erectus'' are unclear. The earliest known fossils of anatomically modern humans such as the

Omo remains The Omo remains are a collection of homininThis article quotes historic texts that use the terms 'hominid' and 'hominin' with meanings that may be different from their modern usages. This is because several revisions in classifying the great apes h ...

from 195,000 years ago, ''

Homo sapiens idaltu Herto Man refers to the 154,000 - 160,000-year-old human remains (''Homo sapiens'') discovered in 1997 from the Upper Herto member of the Bouri Formation in the Afar Triangle, Ethiopia. The discovery of Herto Man was especially significant at the ...

'' from 160,000 years ago, and

Qafzeh Mount Precipice ( he, הר הקפיצה, "''Har HaKfitsa''"; ar, جبل القفزة, "''Jebel al-Qafzeh''", "Mount of the Leap"), also known as Mount of Precipitation, Mount of the Leap of the Lord and Mount Kedumim is located just outside the ...

remains from 90,000 years ago are recognizably modern humans. However, these early modern humans do possess a number of archaic traits, such as moderate, but not prominent, brow ridges.

Brain size expansion

The emergence of archaic humans is sometimes used as an example of

punctuated equilibrium In evolutionary biology, punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a Scientific theory, theory that proposes that once a species appears in the fossil record, the population will become stable, showing little evolution, evol ...

. This occurs when a species undergoes significant biological evolution within a relatively short period. Subsequently, the species undergoes very little change for long periods until the next punctuation. The brain size of archaic humans expanded significantly from in ''erectus'' to . Since the peak of human brain size during the archaics, it has begun to decline.

Origin of language

Robin Dunbar Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar (born 28 June 1947) is a British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist and a specialist in primate behaviour. He is currently head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department ...

has argued that archaic humans were the first to use language. Based on his analysis of the relationship between brain size and hominin group size, he concluded that because archaic humans had large brains, they must have lived in groups of over 120 individuals. Dunbar argues that it was not possible for

hominins The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas). The t ...

to live in such large groups without using language, otherwise there could be no group cohesion and the group would disintegrate. By comparison,

chimpanzees The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative the ...

live in smaller groups of up to 50 individuals.

Fossils

Atapuerca Mountains The Atapuerca Mountains ( es, Sierra de Atapuerca) is a karstic hill formation near the village of Atapuerca in the province of Burgos (autonomous community of Castile and Leon), northern Spain. In a still ongoing excavation campaign, rich fos ...

, ''Sima de los Huesos'' *

Saldanha man __NOTOC__ Saldanha man also known as Saldanha cranium or Elandsfontein cranium are fossilized remains of an archaic human. It is one of the key specimens for ''Homo heidelbergensis''. It has not been dated directly, and is estimated to be roughly ...

Altamura Man The Altamura Man is a fossil of the genus ''Homo'' discovered in 1993 in a karst sinkhole in the Lamalunga Cave near the city of Altamura, Italy. Remarkably well preserved but covered in a thick layer of calcite taking the shape of cave popcor ...

Kabwe skull Kabwe 1 (also called the Broken Hill skull, Rhodesian Man) is a Middle Paleolithic fossil assigned by Arthur Smith Woodward in 1921 as the type specimen for ''Homo rhodesiensis'', now mostly considered a synonym of ''Homo heidelbergensis''.Hubli ...

Steinheim skull The Steinheim skull is a fossilized skull of a ''Homo neanderthalensis'' or ''Homo heidelbergensis'' found on 24 July 1933 near Steinheim an der Murr, Germany. It is estimated to be between 250,000 and 350,000 years old. The skull is slightl ...

Ndutu cranium The Ndutu skull is the partial cranium of a hominin that has been assigned variously to late '' Homo erectus'' ''Homo rhodesiensis'', and early ''Homo sapiens'', from the Middle Pleistocene, found at Lake Ndutu in northern Tanzania. Discovery ...

* Dragon Man * Cro-magnon Man

References

External links

Early and Late "Archaic" Homo Sapiens and "Anatomically Modern" Homo Sapiens

Human Timeline (Interactive)
– Smithsonian,

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

(August 2016). {{Portal bar, Evolutionary biology, Paleontology Middle Stone Age Paleoanthropology Human populations Recent African origin of modern humans Human evolution