Concept

Human

Overview

Humans (Homo sapiens, meaning 'thinking man' or 'wise man') are the most abundant and widespread species of primates, characterized by bipedalism, minimal body hair, and large, complex brains enabling the development of advanced technology, culture, and language. Humans are highly social beings and tend to live in complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families and kinship networks to political states. Social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals, which bolster human society. Curiosity and the human desire to understand and influence the environment have motivated humanity's development of science, philosophy, religion, mythology and other fields of knowledge.

Humans have a large and highly developed prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain associated with higher cognition. They are intelligent beings, capable of episodic memory, flexible facial expressions, self-awareness and a theory of mind. The human mind is capable of introspection (meta-cognition), private thought, imagination, volition and forming views on existence. Humans can also mentally travel through time (chronesthesia) which signifies episodic foresight. These attributes have allowed them to achieve large technological advancements through reason and the transmission of knowledge to future generations. In cultural anthropology, the cumulative preservation and advancement of knowledge across generations is known as the ratchet effect.

Humans are omnivorous, capable of consuming a wide variety of plant and animal material, and have used fire to prepare and cook food. They can survive for up to eight weeks without food, and three or four days without water. Humans are generally diurnal, sleeping on average seven to nine hours per day. Human childbirth is dangerous, with a high risk of complications and death. Both the mother and the father typically provide care for human offspring, who are helpless at birth.

Genes and the environment influence human biological variation in appearance, physiology, immune system, mental abilities, body size and lifespan. Though humans vary in many traits, any two humans are on average over 99% genetically similar, with the most genetically diverse populations from Africa. The greatest degree of genetic variation exists between males and females. On average, males have greater body strength and females generally have a higher body fat percentage. Females undergo menopause and become infertile potentially decades before the end of their lives. They also have a longer life span in almost every population around the world. The division into male and female gender roles has varied historically, and challenges to predominant gender norms have recurred in many societies.

Humans evolved from other hominins in Africa several million years ago. Although some scientists equate humans with all members of the genus Homo, in common usage it generally refers to Homo sapiens, the only extant member. Homo sapiens emerged around 300,000 years ago and migrated out of Africa, gradually replacing local populations of archaic humans. Early humans were hunter-gatherers, before the invention of agriculture and domestication of animals led to permanent settlement in the Fertile Crescent and other cradles of civilization. As food surpluses enabled populations to become larger and denser, forms of governance developed, the use of writing became necessary, and a number of civilizations rose and fell. Humans have continued to expand, with over 8.3 billion humans occupying almost all regions of Earth in 2026, and have even visited the moon, the first known species to do so. This expansion, combined with industrialization, has led to environmental destruction and pollution that significantly contributes to the ongoing mass extinction of many other forms of life.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Human is discussed.

Consequently those fluid bodies produce a modification in the human body while they keep up this reflex motion similar to that produced by the presence of an external body. The mind, therefore, will think as before, that is to say, it will again contemplate the external body as present. This will happen as often as the fluid parts of the human body strike against those planes by their own spontaneous motion…
Benedictus de Spinoza, The Philosophy of Spinoza
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And truth here is the obvious fact that since human nature is the point of existence to which good and evil refer, what is called value has its seat necessarily in human nature, and what is called existence has its seat necessarily in the nature of which human nature is a part and apart. Value, in so far forth, is a content of nature, having its roots in her conditions and its life in her force, while the converse…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
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In an oppressed condition they have hard work and little enjoyment, although much of the culture of the higher classes gradually spreads to them. Yet with the progress of this culture (the height of which is called luxury, reached when the propensity to what can be done without begins to be injurious to what is indispensable), their calamities increase equally in two directions, on the one hand through violence from…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
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Further, "Where the animal and the human are intermingled in one person can one in the name of a second fully developed human being demand the same actions as in the case of a single human being ... our supposition is here of two morally unequal persons of which one has a share of purely animal characteristics in a certain sense the typical fundamental conception which characterises the differences in and between…
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
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In the human subject there are few cases of twins surviving, when one was male and the other female. 2. The human female and the mare copulate after conception more than any other creatures, for all other females, when they have conceived, fly from the males, except those which, like the hare, become pregnant a second time during gestation. But the mare, having once conceived, does not form a second fœtus, but…
Aristotle, Aristotle's History of Animals In Ten Books
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Human

Overview

In the original texts

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