Reply #120: This falsehood coming from a guy who doesn't believe Neanderthals were human.

[greyl]

Same guy who airily lectures people on the "entomology" of words. What a trip.

greyl: "Neanderthals were human."
HamdenRice: "No they weren't human"

Why is it hard to accept that Homo sapiens(modern humans) aren't the only human species that ever existed on Earth? Some lingering Creationist affection perhaps? Why can't you accept that all members of the genus Homo are human?

Some hopefully non-vague facts for you to not misinterpret: Humans are apes. Modern humans and modern apes evolved from a common ancestor. That common ancestor was an ape. The genus homo goes back at least 2.5 million years. That means humans have existed for millions of years.

edit: maybe you missed this link last time I posted it for you:

Linnaean Classification

The taxonomic classification system devised by Linnaeus in 1758 is still used in modified form today. Animals are identified, in descending order, as belonging to a Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and finally a Species. This classification system is based largely on the animal's physical characteristics; things that looked alike were placed together.

In the Linnaean system, humans would be categorized first as Animalia; then Chordata because we have a backbone; Mammalia because we have hair and suckle our young; Primates because we share with apes, monkeys, and lemurs certain morphological characteristics; Hominidae because, among a few other criteria, we are separated from the other apes by being bipedal; Homo being our generic classification as human; and finally sapiens, a species name meaning, rightly or wrongly, "wise."

The Linnaean system also recognizes such groupings as superfamilies and sub-families. In the case of the human lineage, the most often recognized superfamily is the Hominoidea (hominoids), which includes all of the living apes. It is from this point onward that most of the present human origins classification debate begins.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1204_hominin_id.html

Happy learning!