Homo sapiens (sometimes also known as "modern humans") are thought to have diverged in Africa from an earlier hominin around 300,000 years ago, with the earliest fossil evidence of Homo sapiens also appearing around 300,000 years ago in Africa. For humans, sexuality has important social functions: it creates physical intimacy, bonds and hierarchies among individuals, besides ensuring biological reproduction. Delanty, Gerard & Krishan Kumar (2006) The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism. In contrast, pregnancy and natural childbirth remain hazardous ordeals in developing regions of the world, with maternal death rates approximately 100 times greater than in developed countries.[142]. 4–7. [290], All of science can be divided into three major branches, the formal sciences (e.g., logic and mathematics), which are concerned with formal systems, the applied sciences (e.g., engineering, medicine), which are focused on practical applications, and the empirical sciences, which are based on empirical observation and are in turn divided into natural sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, biology) and social sciences (e.g., psychology, economics, sociology). The most significant of these adaptations are 1. bipedalism, 2. increased brain size, 3. lengthened ontogeny (gestation and infancy), 4. decreased sexual dimorphism (neoteny). Find another word for specimen. Apart from bipedalism, humans differ from chimpanzees mostly in smelling, hearing, digesting proteins, brain size, and the ability of language. However, human body hair is vellus hair, most of which is so short and wispy as to be practically invisible. Fossils of anatomically modern humans that date from the Middle Paleolithic (about 200,000 years ago) include the Omo-Kibish I remains of Ethiopia[38][39][40] and the fossils of Herto Bouri, Ethiopia. [260] As well as entertainment, storytelling may also have been used as a way to provide the audience with moral lessons and encourage cooperation. The "out of Africa" migration of Homo sapiens took place in at least two waves, the first around 130,000 to 100,000 years ago, the second (Southern Dispersal) around 70,000 to 50,000 years ago,[65][66] resulting in the colonization of Australia around 65–50,000 years ago,[67][68][69] This recent out of Africa migration derived from East African populations, which had become separated from populations migrating to Southern, Central and Western Africa at least 100,000 years earlier. Humans are able to create new and complex ideas, and to develop technology, which is unprecedented among other organisms on Earth. Many different political systems exist, as do many different ways of understanding them, and many definitions overlap. The science of linguistics describes the structure and function of language and the relationship between languages. [169] Skin color tends to vary clinally and general correlates with the level of ultraviolet radiation in a particular geographic area, with darker skin mostly around the equator. Among the 23 pairs of chromosomes there are 22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. As a result, humans are a cosmopolitan species found in almost all regions of the world, including tropical rainforest, arid desert, extremely cold arctic regions, and heavily polluted cities. Chimpanzees, for example, grow only 14%, with no pronounced spurt. These kinds of relations are generally called kinship relations. [78] The Scientific Revolution, Technological Revolution and the Industrial Revolution brought such discoveries as imaging technology, major innovations in transport, such as the airplane and automobile; energy development, such as coal and electricity. [98], Humans have had a dramatic effect on the environment. [248], Evidence of humans engaging in musical activities predates cave art and so far music has been practised by all human cultures. [273] While the exact time when humans first became religious remains unknown, research shows credible evidence of religious behaviour from around the Middle Paleolithic era (45-200 thousand years ago). A sustained restriction of adult sleep to four hours per day has been shown to correlate with changes in physiology and mental state, including reduced memory, fatigue, aggression, and bodily discomfort. [242][243][244][245][246][247], Art is a defining characteristics of humans and there is evidence for a relationship between creativity and language. Both the mother and the father provide care for human offspring, in contrast to other primates, where parental care is mostly restricted to mothers.[241]. [309] Money has since evolved into governmental issued coins, paper and electronic money.[309]. 41 synonyms of specimen from the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus, plus 21 related words, definitions, and antonyms. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. These are said to possess qualities such as self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is possible that bipedalism was favored because it freed up the hands for reaching and carrying food, because it saved energy during locomotion, because it enabled long-distance running and hunting, or as a strategy for avoiding hyperthermia by reducing the surface exposed to direct sun. Until the development of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, Homo sapiens employed a hunter-gatherer method as their sole means of food collection. [259], Stone tools were used by proto-humans at least 2.5 million years ago. By present estimates, humans have approximately 22,000 genes. [47] Other significant morphological changes included the evolution of a power and precision grip, a change first occurring in H. [84] The human population is not, however, uniformly distributed on the Earth's surface, because the population density varies from one region to another and there are large areas almost completely uninhabited, like Antarctica. Much of human variation is continuous, often with no clear points of demarcation.[200][201][202][195][203][204][205][206][207][208]. [236] Even compared with other social animals, humans have an unusually high degree of flexibility in their facial expressions. Increasingly, however, an understanding of brain functions is being included in psychological theory and practice, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience. ", "Philosophy and information systems: where are we and where should we go? [310] War has had a high cost on human life; during the 20th century, it is estimated that between 167 and 188 million people died as a result of war. Techniques and models from cognitive psychology are widely applied and form the mainstay of psychological theories in many areas of both research and applied psychology. Some philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness, which is experience itself, and access consciousness, which is the processing of the things in experience. Several early hominins used fire and occupied much of Eurasia. Kinship relations often includes regulations for whom an individual should or shouldn't marry. Sexual desire, or libido, is experienced as a bodily urge, often accompanied by strong emotions such as love, ecstasy and jealousy. Although ethnic groups appear and disappear through history, members of ethnic groups often conceptualize their groups as having histories going back into the deep past. [194], Human variation is highly non-concordant: many of the genes do not cluster together and are not inherited together. The definition of happiness is a common philosophical topic. Economic logic is increasingly applied to any problem that involves choice under scarcity or determining economic value. [301][302] Evidence suggests early humans made use of long distance trade routes to exchange goods and ideas, leading to cultural explosions and providing additional food sources when hunting was sparse, while such trade networks did not exist for the now extinct Neanderthals. [267] Throughout history, humans have altered their appearance by wearing clothing. Synonyms, crossword answers and other related words for HUMAN RACE. The human brain, the focal point of the central nervous system in humans, controls the peripheral nervous system. The relationship between all these changes is the subject of ongoing debate. This change in diet may also have altered human biology; with the spread of dairy farming providing a new and rich source of food, leading to the evolution of the ability to digest lactose in some adults. [82] Human settlements continue to be vulnerable to natural disasters, especially those placed in hazardous locations and with low quality of construction. There will also be a list of synonyms for your answer.