Homo
genus of mammals
Homo (from Latin homō 'human') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus (subtribe Hominina), encompassing a single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (e.g. Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans, collectively called archaic humans. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus. The closest living relatives of Homo are of the hominin genus Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos), with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7–11 million years ago during the Late Miocene.
The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with fossil records of just over 2 million years ago. H. erectus appeared about 2 million years ago and spread throughout Africa (debatably as another species called Homo ergaster) and Eurasia in several migrations. The species was adaptive and successful, and persisted for more than a million years before gradually diverging into new species around 500,000 years ago.
Anatomically modern humans (early H. sapiens) emerged close to 300,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa, and H. neanderthalensis emerged around the same time in Europe and Western Asia. H. sapiens dispersed from Africa in several waves, from possibly as early as 250,000 years ago, and certainly by 130,000 years ago, with the so-called Southern Dispersal, beginning about 70,000–50,000 years ago, leading to the lasting colonisation of Eurasia and Oceania by 50,000 years ago. H. sapiens met and interbred with archaic humans in Africa and in Eurasia.
The public source identifies “Homo” as genus of mammals. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Homo, genus and mammals.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q171283. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Homo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.