NEW YORK ¨C The term ¡°Homo sapiens¡± is no longer working so well. Neither is the closely related term, ¡°modern humans,¡± used to describe us and fossils of long-dead people who looked something like us. It¡¯s not just that ¡°sapiens¡± means wise, and there¡¯s no evidence that our species is any wiser than any of the other kinds of humans that walked the planet. The problem is bigger than that. It¡¯s hard to be objective about ourselves, even for scientists.
I started considering the trouble after seeing a Twitter discussion among paleontologists who appeared to be upset by the way journalists had used ¡°modern humans¡± about a new claim that fossils found in Greece date back 210,000 years.
What should journalists have called them? There¡¯s no great answer from human history. The story has just become too messy.
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