If you browse the news websites, you’ll read articles about recent discoveries in anthropology. Often these articles talk about when “humans” emerged on the planet. But the term “human” gets tossed about in a rather cavalier manner, sometimes referring to Homo sapiens and sometimes not. You see, since science presumes humans evolved from ancient hominids, those ancient hominid species can be referred to as “human” too. Yet most of us humans think of the term as meaning Homo sapiens.

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