Talk:Human

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Human article.
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A fact from Human appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 5 July 2009.

Wikipedia

Improvements?

Some of the statements are perhaps not that good. ants and bees are more organised than humans, for example--Eptalon (talk) 15:26, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good job on the article guys. I must admit, though, I was rather ticked that all my work (with references) was removed. Now it says "Most scientists think that early humans first appeared about 130 thousand years ago in the continent of Africa.{{fact}}{{fact}} This is known through fossils or bones from that time.{{fact}}{{fact}}" That is so completely bias and unproven I want to add the tag again. And saying, "The idea that humans were created by a superior being is generally called creationism. How this was done is explained in Creation myth" does not make it neutral. -- American Eagle (talk) 18:43, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Dover trial (a good article, by the way) says that Intelligent Design/Creationism is not science. It is therefore mentioned the way it is (For other ideas..). If I read en:Human evolution (which we also have, at Human evolution) correctly, there is indeed some kind of naming issue:

The first Homo (homo habilis) developed from Australopithecus about 2 million years ago.
Look at how much they actually have (some species are described based on one sample (which consists of the part of a jawbowne, some other shards of a skull, and perhaps 1-2 teeth (see en:Homo antecessor for an exmple.). Since they are not living species, it is hard to say that if you look at some feature, if that was common. (It occurs in 100% of the samples you have, but you only have one).
There are some debates whether Neanderthals were a separate species or a subspecies. Since the seems to be almost no gene flow between the two the separate species is more likely at the moment

Homo sapiens occurs from about 400.000 years ago to today (By 10.000 years ago, the only homo left was that of today). I generally agree with you that the numbers need looking at.--Eptalon (talk) 19:55, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

en:Paranthropus aethiopicus is what I meant when I talked about the one-sample specues...--Eptalon (talk) 21:02, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have extended/rewritten the section on human origins considerably; With this I have also re-added the two references removed beforehand.--Eptalon (talk) 16:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My, my. You want to get into a debate over the origin of life, I could go on for hours and there's no way you could win. :P This video is awesome. (very good movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed) But I think that the article is a little better (I was a bit annoyed seeing my work taken out). Thanks for all your work on it, it's much better than before. -- American Eagle (talk) 18:48, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I didn't really want to remove everything about intelligent design and creation theory as I'm quite open minded on the subject. I tried to follow the example of the EN Wiki article on Humans which has a seperate section on religion and creation theory but I haven't got round to adding that yet. The Flying Spaghetti Monster! 19:55, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I am openly no friend of Intelligent design. Some designs of the current humans (see en:Argument from poor design) are such that they cannot really be called good. The en:appendix has no apparent function in humans. Yet they can die from appendicitis?- The eyes of humans (and other mammals) are also very badly designed. The en:Plantaris muscle lets apes use their feet to grab things. In humans it is hardly usable. Put with the eyes of evolution. If you are better-adapted to someone else, you can reproduce better/more often, whatever; in a few generations, the things that make you better will be there more often. Meaning that evolution pushes for peaks of fitness; these peaks are not necessarily the highest overall, they are just the highest close by; In any case, an article is there to state the facts, not say this one is right, and that one wrong. Put very dumbly: Until you see a flying pig, you cannot say that pigs don't fly... ;)--Eptalon (talk) 20:19, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering about the conservation staus thing-does it make sense entirely? On the normal wikipedia it just says " Not Rated" Titch (talk) 08:48, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Making this a good article

I think it is possible to make this a good article. For this is should still be expanded a little (at about 15k, we are probably at the safe side). Other things to look at:

Accuracy: Humans are classified as Presocial (together with wolves, which hunt in packs). This is a lower level of social behaviour like that of Eusociality (seen with some bees, ants, and two kinds of mole rats form Africa; the only known mammals to show this behavior).
Fact checking. Fact templates should be added, where needed...--Eptalon (talk) 14:00, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I changed 'animals' to 'most animals' and linked that to presocial. Does that fix the problem? The Flying Spaghetti Monster! 19:59, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe this article could be good article material, but I notice quite a lot of complex words. Words like "therefore" are not simple, and it should instead become "because of...". I'll be happy to copyedit the article. -- RyanCross (talk) 22:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Include" is also used a lot. -- American Eagle (talk) 22:14, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A better word(s) could be "such as" and things like that. I'll try to copyedit those. -- RyanCross (talk) 22:15, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have edited/rewritten the social animal part. Do you think we should mention Aristotle with his zoon politikon (social animal) theory (Aristotle spoke about humans being social animals, in his theory of state, when he tried to say that the state as a poliical entity is something natural in a human society). --Eptalon (talk) 22:21, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose. As long as it doesn't get off subject. Adding that would be appropriate I guess. -- RyanCross (talk) 22:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Expansion

If anyone can expand the psychology section could you please as it's not really my field of expertise or interest to be honest. I'm going to expand 'culture' soon to include music and the arts, technology and religion. Any other suggestion let me know. The Flying Spaghetti Monster! 20:19, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll do this while I work on the main Psychology article this month. I'm new on Wikipedia and may need technical help with edits and format. Cwilsyn (talk) 12:56, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok I can do that if you just write the main, or I can show you how. Either way, thanks very much. FSM ^Noodly? 12:58, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

excessive detail

Some of the details of modern history are excessive, especially in the footnotes. For example, it is interesting and important that mankind has been involved in wars throughout recorded history. It says something about our species. But the detail about the second world war in the references is just silly. This 'recency' throws off the perspective of the article. Even major political events have only a temporary effect. Perhaps the last really important event was the industrial revolution, which has really changed the whole of the globe. In any event, I suggest a pruning of excessive detail about the modern world. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why did this person remove the InfoBox?

http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Human&diff=3455252&oldid=3455175 --MarsRover (talk) 08:13, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Creation Theories

You could make a section about how other belief systems understand the origins of man. Frogger48 (talk) 03:58, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SOFIXIT. -DJSasso (talk) 11:27, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

emotions?

I find it very worrying that the authors of the article seem to believe that humans are the only species capable of thinking, learning, feeling emotions, having wars, passing information onto others, and trying to understand what things are and how they work. There also seem to be a lot of phrases along the lines of "by the way guys, humans are totally the best species EVAR!!!!1!". I've seen the edits made on December 10 2014, and while I can't support vandalism they seem to have had a point about the way this article is written. 2.223.248.100 (talk) 18:28, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes, in their effort to write simply, editors don't get the emphasis quite right. I have revised the section on psychology. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:18, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Removing sourced material

Longstanding sourced material should not be removed without discussion. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:05, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Macdonald-ross: I was searching in vain for a rule stating that. The only thing I found was WP:BOLD, which also says that you should be nice to newcomers (like me). Did I overlook something ? --Rsk6400 (talk) 12:44, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, of course. The whole point of sourcing is to show what experts have published on the subject. Obviously. an unsupported change is or may be just what one editor thinks. That has no status, because the editor may not be expert on the subject-matter. Also, the second issue is the length of time which a text has been on the page. It will be read by many people of the course of a couple of years, and any obvious fault is very likely corrected. In any event, we are not going to permit long-standing and sourced accounts to be changed just because an editor wants to , Changes to established pages do need to be justified, Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:39, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Macdonald-ross: Some of the nonsense I deleted at Race (sociology) had been there since 2009 - eleven years. If Longstanding sourced material should not be removed without discussion is an official WP policy, I'd be very thankful if you could tell me where to find it. --Rsk6400 (talk) 07:03, 30 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Race" is not "questionable", but outdated

The article states that "Human races are questionable as valid biological categories." (section Race and ethnicity). The source given is of 2004. Recent sources, among them an official statement by the Amercian Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA), simply state that the concept of race cannot be applied to human beings, and also that it is harmful. The sources are cited at Race (sociology), no. 2 and 3 in the lede. The last sentence of the AAPA statement says: "The belief in “races” as natural aspects of human biology, and the structures of inequality (racism) that emerge from such beliefs, are among the most damaging elements in the human experience both today and in the past." --Rsk6400 (talk) 14:39, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Deism

I removed People who believe in one or more gods, but do not belong to a religion, are called deists, which is not true. A better definition can be found in the article Deism, but since Deism was a movement more or less restricted to the age of enlightenment, I'd rather drop the sentence than correcting it. --Rsk6400 (talk) 11:02, 30 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Human population

Should "As of 2020, there were over 7,600 million people living on Earth." be changed to "As of October 2020, there were over 7,800 million people living on Earth."? 71.178.41.80 (talk) 18:08, 29 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to the source given, on Oct 29, we number 7,694,000,000. Other sources give a higher estimate, but with "over 7,600" we are on the safe side. --Rsk6400 (talk) 19:40, 29 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it to "7.6 million". I agree it should stay this way to be on the safe side. --IWI (talk) 19:45, 29 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's now very clear that the human population is going to go down, and this will continue. Evidence is connected with falling birth rates in many countries, and difficulties with food production. Principally the drop in birth rates is the evidence. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:02, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]