Human origins and the origins of humanity

As long asHomo sapiens was considered to be separated from the rest of the natural world by an unbridgeable if narrow gulf, there was no difficulty in defining, or at least in recognizing, what is «human» and what is not. But with the advent of evolutionary thought came the realization that the concept of humanity lacks any firm definition. While adminitting that any definition of humanness must be essentially intuitive and thus arbitrary, this article examines various innovations in the human fossil and archaeological records and discusses at what point humanness could be said to have been achieved. This task is complicated by the fact that there appears to be no correspondence whatever between biological and cultural innovation.