Modern humans and Homo sapiens are used synonymously throughout this book. Humans, by contrast, could mean any member of the Homo species, such as Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens. Archaic humans refers to those members of the Homo species that are extinct – such as Homo habilis, Homo erectus or Homo neanderthalensis. However, in the Holocene (from ~9700 BCE onward), ‘humans’ will mean modern humans since archaic humans are believed to have gone extinct by then.
