ANTHROP 4S03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Homo Sapiens Idaltu, Neanderthal, Homo Habilis
18 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
Human beings are living creatures who belong to the animal kingdom. Indeed, some anthropologists define human beings as animals who have culture and consider our ability to talk or our use of symbols as the defining feature (see unit four). The question of what makes humankind unique has generated controversy and debate. Regardless of disagreements about such philosophical issues, scientists agree on how to classify human beings in terms of biological similarities and differences with other animals. We do in fact fit quite nicely into the scheme of life as we know it. Biologists use various categories to label groupings which become increasingly more encompassing (e. g. species, genus, family, order, class, phylum or division, and finally kingdom). These categories can be further sub divided (e. g. order, subspecies) to make finer discriminations. A species, which comes at the bottom of the list, consists of a grouping of animals which form a breeding population.
