Search results
Mar 10, 2022 · A human being is any member of the mammalian species Homo sapiens -- a relatively new species that has been around for about 315,000 years. Humans spent most of their history as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Modern humans have the following characteristics.
- Humanity
The capacity to accept others for who they are without being...
- People
People imagine themselves and others as having...
- Avoidance
This neglects the role of these emotions in your development...
- Status
Status, or social status, is the respect that a person holds...
- Actions
Human Behavior . Ghosting . Sycophancy . Cruel To Be Kind ....
- Family
An overview of human beings and their common...
- 25 Characteristics of Humans
Intelligence. Humans demonstrate high levels of motivation...
- Humanity
- Intelligence. Humans demonstrate high levels of motivation and self-awareness and can perform complex cognitive tasks such as recognizing patterns, solving problems, applying first principles, learning, experimenting and developing knowledge.
- Emotion. Humans have cognitive states known as emotionsthat color all thoughts at a point in time. These allow the same individual to switch into different modes of behavior as appropriate.
- Biases & Fallacies. Humans are highly intelligentbut are also highly fallible. They commonly suffer from biases, mistakes and shortfalls of thinking that result in fallacies.
- Technology. Humans develop and build tools, clothing, buildings, infrastructureand automation. They are relatively helpless without these technologies and grow dependent on them.
- Walking Upright. The earliest humans climbed trees and walked on the ground. This flexibility helped them get around in diverse habitats and cope with changing climates.
- Tools & Food. Early humans butchered large animals at least 2.6 million years ago. By at least 500,000 years ago, early humans made wooden spears and used them to kill large animals.
- Bodies. As early humans spread to different environments, they evolved body shapes that helped them survive in hot and cold climates. Changing diets also led to changes in body shape.
- Brains. As early humans faced new environmental challenges and evolved bigger bodies, they evolved larger and more complex brains.
Sep 7, 2024 · The feature we have that is most extraordinary is the brain, a key part of what makes us human. The relative size, scale, and capacity of the human brain are greater than those of any other species. The size of the human brain relative to the total weight of the average human is 1-to-50. Most other mammals have a ratio of only 1-to-180.
- Overview
- Evolution
Homo sapiens, (Latin: “wise man”) the species to which all modern human beings belong. Homo sapiens is one of several species grouped into the genus Homo, but it is the only one that is not extinct. See also human evolution.
The name Homo sapiens was applied in 1758 by the father of modern biological classification (see taxonomy), Carolus Linnaeus. It had long been known that human beings physically resemble the primates more closely than any other known living organisms, but at the time it was a daring act to classify human beings within the same framework used for the rest of nature. Linnaeus, concerned exclusively with similarities in bodily structure, faced only the problem of distinguishing H. sapiens from apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, and gibbons), which differ from humans in numerous bodily as well as cognitive features. (Charles Darwin’s treatise on evolution, On the Origin of Species, would come 101 years later.)
(Read Ray Kurzweil’sBritannica essay on the future of “Nonbiological Man.”)
Since Linnaeus’s time, a large fossil record has been discovered. This record contains numerous extinct species that are much more closely related to humans than to today’s apes and that were presumably more similar to H. sapiens behaviorally as well. Following the ancestors of modern human beings into the distant past raises the question of what is meant by the word human. H. sapiens is human by definition, whereas apes are not. But what of the extinct members of the human tribe (Hominini), who were clearly not H. sapiens but were nonetheless very much like them? There is no definitive answer to this question. Although human evolution can be said to involve all those species more closely related to H. sapiens than to the apes, the adjective human is usually applied only to H. sapiens and other members of the genus Homo (e.g., H. erectus, H. habilis). Behaviorally, only H. sapiens can be said to be “fully human,” but even the definition of H. sapiens is a matter of active debate. Some paleoanthropologists extend the span of this species far back into time to include many anatomically distinctive fossils that others prefer to allocate to several different extinct species. In contrast, a majority of paleoanthropologists, wishing to bring the study of hominins into line with that of other mammals, prefer to assign to H. sapiens only those fossil forms that fall within the anatomic spectrum of the species as it exists today. In this sense, H. sapiens is very recent, having originated in Africa more than 315,000 years ago (315 kya).
Britannica Quiz
Match the Baby Animal to Its Mama Quiz
Before about 1980 it was widely thought that distinctively hominin fossils could be identified from 14 to 12 million years ago (mya). However, during the 1970s geneticists introduced the use of molecular clocks to calculate how long species had been separated from a common ancestor. The molecular clock concept is based on an assumed regularity in the accumulation of tiny changes in the genetic codes of humans and other organisms. Use of this concept, together with a reanalysis of the fossil record, moved the estimated time of the evolutionary split between apes and human ancestors forward to as recently as about 5 mya. Since then the molecular data emerging from DNA sequencing and a steady trickle of new hominin fossil finds have pushed the earliest putative hominin ancestry back in time somewhat, to perhaps 8–6 mya.
Students save 67%! Learn more about our special academic rate today.
Nov 14, 2024 · Human being, a culture-bearing primate classified in the genus Homo, especially the species H. sapiens. Human beings are anatomically similar and related to the great apes but are distinguished by a more highly developed brain and a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning.
People also ask
What are the characteristics of a human being?
What does it mean to be human?
What is the most extraordinary feature of human life?
What skills do humans have?
What are the characteristics of a human society?
What makes humans human?
Feb 2, 2022 · Fire. 8. Blushing. 9. Long childhoods. 10. Life after children. Humans are unusual animals by any stretch of the imagination. Our special anatomy and abilities, such as big brains and opposable ...
