Homo sapiens sapiens

Familia: Hominidae
Subfamilia: Homininae
Tribus: Hominini
Subtribus: Hominina
Genus: Homo
Species: Homo sapiens
Subspecies: Homo sapiens sapiens

Homo sapiens sapiens

• Linnaeus is designated as the lectotype of H. sapiens (Stearn, 1959; see also Notton & Stringer, n.d.).

• H. s. sapiens was not truly used by Linnaeus (1758) or Stearn (1959). It was misattributed to Linnaeus by Bailey (1946).
• The name has at least three meanings:
  • In the 1940s, H. s. sapiens was used as a synonym for Linnaeus' H. s. europaeus (Bailey, 1946, p. 356; Hall, 1946, p. 359). Linnaeus originally named four geographical subspecies of Homo sapiens: europaeus, afer, asiaticus and americanus. Building on Linnaeus' taxonomic work, Baker differentiated in 1974 between six geographical subspecies of Homo sapiens: australasicus (Bory, 1825), albus (Gmelin, 1788), afer, hottentotus (Bory, 1825), asiaticus and americanus. Baker notes that the correct name for the subspecies H. s. albus is disputed: possibly H. s. sapiens or H. s. europaeus (Linnaeus, 1758; Baker, 1974). This division of the extant human populations into taxonomic subspecies was gradually given up in the 1970s (e.g., Thenius et al., 1975).
  • H. s. sapiens was used for Cro-Magnon Man by some authors who classified Neanderthals (H. s. neanderthalensis) as a subspecies of H. sapiens (e.g., Pearce, 1971; Szalay and Delson, 1979).
  • More recently, H. s. sapiens was also used in a wider sense for anatomically modern humans by some authors who classified Herto Man (H. s. idaltu) as subspecies of H. sapiens (White et al., 2003).

• Bailey, J. W., 1946. The Mammals of Virginia. Richmond: Williams Printing. Google.
• Baker, J. R., 1974. Race. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 624-625. PDF
• Bory de Saint-Vincent, G. J., 1825. Homme. Homo. In: Audouin, I. B. et al., 1825. Dictionnaire classique d ’histoire naturelle. Vol. 8. Paris: Rey & Gravier, pp. 269-346. BHL
• Gmelin, J. F., 1788. See Linneus, C., 1788
• Hall, E. R., 1946. Zoological Subspecies of Man at the Peace Table. Journal of Mammalogy 27 (4): 358–364. JSTOR.
• Hall, E. R., 1960. Zoological Subspecies of Man. Mankind Quarterly 1 (2): 113-119. Google.
• Linneus, C., 1758. Systema naturea per regna tria naturea: secundum classes, ordines, genera, species. 10th edit. Vol. I. Holmize (Salvius). BHL
• Linneus, C., 1788. Systema naturae per regna tria naturae: secundum classes, ordines, genera, species. 13th edit. Vol. I, Part 1. Edited by Gmelin, J. F.. Lipsiae (Beer). BHL
• Notton, D., & Stringer, C., undated. Who is the type of Homo sapiens?. International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. ICZN.
• Pearce, E. K. V., 1971. Proto-neolithic Adam and Recent Anthropology. Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 23: 130-39. JASA.
• Stearn, W. T., 1959. The background of Linnaeus's contributions to the nomenclature and methods of systematic biology. Systematic zoology 8: 4–22. JSTOR
• Szalay, F. S. & Delson, E., 1979. Evolutionary History of the Primates. Academic Press, p. 508. Google.
• Thenius, E., Hemmer, H. & Klinghammer, E., 1975. Human origins. In: Grzimek, B. (ed.), Animal life encyclopedia, Vol. II, Mammals II. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Google.
• White, Tim D.; Asfaw, B.; DeGusta, D.; Gilbert, H.; Richards, G. D.; Suwa, G.; Howell, F. C., 2003: Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature, 423: 742–747. PDF.