ABSTRACT

The term modern humans is not scientifically precise and has different meanings for different people: For some the term is synonymous with “bipedally walking hominids”; for others the term refers exclusively to people who are alive today; for others it refers to all ancestral forms that show the ability to do what contemporary humans do. This chapter uses the term modern humans in an evolutionary sense to refer to those hominids whose fossilized anatomy suggests they would fall within the range of people living today and who leave evidence that they were able to do what people living today are able to do. In behavioral terms, this usually refers to the ability to do and have art, ritual, religion, science, and speech, behaviors not attributable to the LCA. Again, only the genetic parts of behavior are evolutionary. We will use the term contemporary humans when we refer to human populations in existence today or in the very recent past.