Notes

For example, lions, tigers, leopards and
jaguars are different (species) within the same
(genus)
-Panthera-.

It's, also, it's important to know, that
scientists usually like to use the Latin
language in order to name things, because
everything's sounds far more impressive
and scientific when you say it in Latin.
So, for example, all the medicines we use
or the name of the muscles in our bodies
are all in Latin. Also, the names of animals,
biologists, and plants, and all other organisms,
biologists like to use Latin to give animals those
scientific name. And the rule is that a scientific
name of each animal has two parts. First, the
genus, and then the specie.


Lions for example, the scientific name of
the lion is not lion. When you write in scientific
articles about lions you don't speak about lions,
you speak about Panthera leo.
This is the scientific name of the lion.
-Panthera- is the name of the (genus). It comes
first, and then -leo-, this is the name of the
(species). It comes second, so lion is (Panthera leo).

You and me, and I guess everybody who
watches this video, we are all a (Homo sapiens).
This is the scientific name of our species, Homo
sapiens, which means the species, sapiens, a Latin
word meaning wise, of the genus Homo, a Latin
word meaning men.
So the meaning of the scientific name Homo sapiens
is wise men, this is the name we gave ourselves,
we might be very wise but we are not particularly
modest.

so this is genus, and genera.
The genera is the plural of the
word genus. Genera in their term are also
grouped by
biologists into larger collectives which
are known as (families).
So we have in nature, for
example the cat
family, which includes many, many genera
and species of cats like all the lions
and
cheetahs and house cats, they all
belong to the (cat family).
And we have the dog family, which
includes
not only dogs but all kinds of
wolves and, and foxes, and jackals. They all belong to the big family,
the (dog
family).
And we have the elephant family, which
includes Indian elephants and African
elephants,
and extinct species of
elephants, like mammoth and mastodons.


What is important to know is that all
members of the family Trace the lineage
back to some ancient ancestor
who is the
great, great, great grandmother or
grandfather of all of them.
All the cats for example, from
the most
ferocious lion in the African Savannah to
the smallest, cutest, house kitten in
your house.
They all
have the same great, great,
great ancestor, who lived about 25
million years ago.
So, these are families.


Homo sapiens too, our species, belongs to
a family.
A biological family.
This banal fact, used to be one
of the
most closely guarded secrets of history.
For thousands of years, Homo sapiens
preferred to view
itself as totally
different from all the other animals and
set apart from all the other animals as a
kind
of orphan, which has no family, no
cousins, no siblings, and most
importantlym no parents.
As if Homo sapiens
just popped up on
earth without having any evolutionary
ancestors, but that is just not the case.


Whether you like it or not, the truth is
that we, the species Homo sapiens are
also members of a large and
particularly
noisy family called, the family of great
apes.
Just as lions and cheetahs belong to the
family
of cats.
So we Homo sapiens have a family called
the great apes.
There are some other members of this
family,
which are still living today in
the world.
Our closest cousins, our closest
relatives which are still alive,
includes
the chimpanzees, the gorillas, and
orangutans.
Of these, chimpanzees are the closest to
us.
Just
6 million years ago, if you went
back in time 6 million years, you would
find somewhere in Africa a single
female
ape who had two daughters.
One of her daughters became the ancestor
of all the chimpanzees and the
sister,
the other daughter, she's yours and mine
great, great, great, great, great
grandmother.
So Homo
sapiens belongs to a family.


Homo sapiens has kept hidden an even more
disturbing secret.
We have not only a big family with many
cousins.

Once upon a time, we also had quite a few
brothers and sisters. We, that is Homo sapiens, we tend to call

ourselves not Homo sapiens.
Usually, when we speak about ourselves, we use the title human as if only us are

human we are the only humans.
But the fact is that there used to be
many other human species on planet Earth.

Humans simply means animals that belong
to the genus Homo,that is man in Latin.
So this humans, they first
appeared in
East Africa, about 2 and a half million
years ago. They did not appear out of nowhere, they

evolved from an earlier genus of apes,
which is called Australopithecus. It has nothing to do with Australia,
this
complicated name.
It simply means southern ape.
so Australopithecus was the ancient
ancestor of humans.

The first human specie evolved from
Australopithecus somewhere in east Africa
about 2 and a half million years
ago.
At first, it was the only human specie,
but, about 2 million years ago, some of
these archaic men and
women left their
homeland in east Africa and spread around
the world, settling various areas in
North Africa,
the Middle East Europe and
Asia.
And in each area, these men and women encountered different conditions,
a
different climate, different geography,
animals and plants.
And in order to adapt to these different

conditions, the human populations, in
each of those areas began to evolve in different ways.
And this created,
with time, completely
different human species.
For example, humans who after leaving
Africa, reached northern
Europe, they
needed to adapt to the very cold climate
of northern Europe with lots of ice and
snow.
And all
kinds of big animals like birds
and mammoth and mastodons.
Other humans, after leaving Africa, they
eventually
ended up in Indonesia and they
needed to adapt to the very hot, tropical
climate of the jungles and swamps of

Indonesia.
Other humans, meanwhile, reached central
Asia, the deserts of central Asia, and
they needed to adapt
to survive the very
dry climates of central Asia.
So the result was that over the years,
many, many different
species of humans
evolved in different parts of the world. And to each of these different human
species,
scientists have assigned its own
pompous Latin name.
Now, you don't need to remember the names
of the different
species and the details
that I'm going to tell about the
different species.
But I would like to take a few
minutes to
tell you about some of these, of ancient brothers and sisters of ours, some of
these ancient human
species so that you
will know our family a little better.


From:
https://class.coursera.org/humankind-002/lecture/9