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Important Note: The most appropriate image to use at the top of this article has been a highly controversial issue with many valid viewpoints. See FAQ below for discussion history.

view · edit Frequently asked questions To view the response to a question, click the [show] link to the right of the question. Q1: Why does the Human article use the third person? Aren't we humans? A1: The third person ("Humans are..." or "They are..." as opposed to "We are...") is simply the conventional mode of writing for Wikipedia and other reference works. We realize this may cause some phrases in Human to sound quite strange — "a majority of humans professes some variety of religious or spiritual belief" sounds almost like it was written by space aliens. However, the occasional strangeness this approach may lead to is still preferable to the alternative of inconsistency. If we were to use "we" in the Human article, it would mean sometimes switching strangely between persons as we narrow our topic of discussion. For example, even if an editor were female, she would be forced to write things like "We humans, and especially those females...." Whenever a subgroup of humanity became the article's focus, we would need to switch to the third person; a sentence about humans would use "we", but a sentence about adults, Asians, engineers, or heterosexuals would need to use "they". It is far simpler to just consistently use the third person in all contexts, even if this doesn't always seem completely natural. A related issue is the fact that, as a general rule, Wikipedia prefers to avoid self-references. In addition to being human, all editors on this site happen to be English speakers — yet we treat our article on the English language the same way we treat every other language article, in order to avoid bias and inconsistency. Likewise, we treat Wikipedia the same as other websites and reference tools. Analogously, we ought to aspire to treat Human in much the same way that we treat every other species article. Ideally, we should make exceptions of Human only where objective, verifiable facts demand that we make exceptions (e.g., in employing a lengthy behavior section). This is the simplest and easiest way to avoid bias and to prevent editorial disputes: When in doubt, follow the rest of Wikipedia's lead. Q2: Aren't humans supposed to be purely herbivorous/frugivorous despite our modern omnivorous habits? Aren't we jungle apes albeit highly intelligent and largely furless jungle apes? Most jungle apes eat no meat or very little. A2: No, we really are natural omnivores. Contrary to popular belief, we humans did not evolve in jungles. We actually evolved on open grasslands where fruit-bearing trees are nowhere near as plentiful as in the jungle, where most of our surviving close relatives evolved. Evolving in such a place, we would have always (for as long as we've been humans rather than Australopithecines and other even earlier fossilized genera) had to supplement our diet with meat in addition to plant material. We evolved also eating plant-derived foods to be sure; the Savannah (grassland) has some trees with edible fruit although comparatively few and far between, and grain-bearing grasses are far more plentiful there than any tree. (Some evidence suggests that the first bread and beer were made from these tropical grains long before recorded history.) Even so, the grassland being much less fruit-rich than the jungle caused us to evolve as true metabolic omnivores, not pure herbivores/frugivores. See the Archived Debates on this subtopic for source documents. Q3: How was the lead image chosen? A3: The current lead image was added on 15 September 2009 following this discussion and given this explanation. In short, an editor looked at commons:Category:Couples and picked one. Due to alphabetical sorting, this one came up early (the filename starts with "A"), so they picked it. They were looking for an adult couple standing side-by-side. The use of this image has been discussed many times over the years, including but not limited to: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. The current wording of this FAQ entry was decided following this discussion. See also our policy on photo galleries of people. Q4: Is it possible for an infobox image to perfectly and accurately represent all of humanity? A4: No. Q5: Is it possible for the text of this article to perfectly and accurately represent all of humanity? A5: No. Q6: If we can't make a perfect representation, should we still try to make the best representation we can? A6: Yes. Of course. Because Wikipedia is a work in progress. Q7: How should the infobox image best represent humanity? A7: The lead image should illustrate important features of the subject — in the case of Human, these include an upright bipedal gait, hands specialized for manipulating tools, and use of cultural products such as clothing. Lead images can attempt to encapsulate the broad strokes of the diversity and variation in its subject (e.g. Frog, Primate). The current consensus is that attempting to do further like that for humanity is not practical. There is a guideline MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES that exists due to issues on this topic in the past, stating that we may not assemble a gallery of many images into the infobox. And regardless of MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES, by picking just one image, we leave space for showing important details of that image which would be obscured if we shrank it in order to fit multiple photos in. Sometimes, what a collage gains in diversity, it loses in detail and clarity. In this case, the current consensus is that the topic covered at Human is best served with a single image — a collage of faces, for example, would fail to illustrate the human body. Q8: Shouldn't the lead image show more major groups of humans? A8: There is no good way to decide which groups of humans are the "major" ones. The consensus is that showing more groupings (such as along ethnic lines) is contentious due to the risk of unverifiable species-wide generalizations. As a middle ground, we currently just show examples of a male and a female human to represent sexual dimorphism in humans. While many Wikipedia articles on diverse subject matter (e.g. Spider, Bird) do attempt to encapsulate that variety through galleries and selections of images, we are prohibited from doing so on this article per MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES even if we wanted to. Other articles on diverse subject matter sometimes similarly have few examples, or even one example, rather than a collage in their infobox (e.g. Whale). Q9: The current image is blurry/low-resolution/JPG-artifacted. Shouldn't it be replaced? A9: The current consensus is that this isn't that big a deal. When viewed as normal at thumbnail size at a glance, you can't really tell. Q10: The current image shows two people, not one. Doesn't that violate MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES to begin with? A10: The current consensus is that group photos probably do not violate MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES. That guideline is based on an RfC, and is to be interpreted narrowly. It specifically only prohibits galleries or photomontages to illustrate ethnic groups or other similarly large human populations. The consensus on this page is that a group photo does not count. Past discussion of this can be found here. Q11: Could the lead image be a different photo? Perhaps a group photo with more than two people in it? Or a photo of an individual? A11: There is nothing prohibiting that, it is just not the current consensus to do that on this page. It would likely take a large discussion and very strong arguments for why the alternate image is an improvement. Q12: Other ethnic groups have lead images such as a flag or map (e.g. of population density). Could that be the lead image (instead of any image(s) of humans)? A12: There is nothing prohibiting that, it is just not the current consensus to do that on this page. There already is a population density map at the bottom of the infobox. Q13: Why isn't the lead image more abstract or symbolic? A13: Because any attempt to symbolically or nonliterally depict humans will subtly express an editorial opinion about what the "essence" or "nature" of humanity is. Even if we pick a famous artist's work to put at the top of Human, the fact that we chose that particular work, and not another, will show that we endorse certain non-encyclopedic points of view about humanity. The only real way to avoid this pitfall is to not pick an image that is even remotely symbolic or nonliteral — a completely literal, straightforward photograph simply depicting a human, with no more "deep meaning" than our lead image for Brown bear has, is the most neutral option available. It is also worth noting that most abstract depictions of humanity remove a great deal of visual information. Wikipedia's purpose is educational, and our readers include non-native English speakers, young children, neurodivergent people, and other readers who will be best served by a clear, unambiguous, and factually rich depiction of the topic at hand. Imaginative works also tend to be much more subjective and idiosyncratic than photographs, reflecting the creator's state of mind as much as the subject matter itself. The purpose of an article's lead image is to accurately depict the article's subject matter, which in this case means accurately depicting a human.

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, use the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (center, color, defense, realize, traveled) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

	Human is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
	Human has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result September 13, 2005 Peer review Reviewed November 1, 2005 Featured article candidate Promoted February 13, 2006 Featured article review Demoted November 14, 2006 Good article nominee Listed January 1, 2008 Good article reassessment Delisted February 1, 2020 Good article nominee Not listed July 25, 2021 Good article nominee Listed Current status: Former featured article, current good article

This  level-1 vital article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects.

Anthropology Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anthropology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Anthropology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnthropologyWikipedia:WikiProject AnthropologyTemplate:WikiProject AnthropologyAnthropology Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale. Primates Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Primates, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Primates on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PrimatesWikipedia:WikiProject PrimatesTemplate:WikiProject PrimatesPrimate Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. 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WikiProject Animals To-do: edit history watch purge Here are some Open Tasks : Copyedit: Merge: GLAM/ARKive donated texts into articles about endangered species. Improve: Photoperiodism, Tool use by non-human animals, Omnivore, Animal suicide, Sphaerium beckmani (a species in family Sphaeriidae), Requests: Mammals: Invertebrates: Campocraspedon Fishes: Zaniolepis frenata Merge: GLAM/ARKive donated texts into articles about endangered species. Expand: Junqueira cow, Atka mackerel Nominate and vote: Science collaboration of the month, Article Improvement Drive, WikiProject Animals Collaboration Mammals Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mammals, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mammal-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MammalsWikipedia:WikiProject MammalsTemplate:WikiProject Mammalsmammal Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Transhumanism Top‑importance Human' is part of WikiProject Transhumanism, which aims to organize, expand, clean up, and guide Transhumanism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page for more details.TranshumanismWikipedia:WikiProject TranshumanismTemplate:WikiProject TranshumanismTranshumanism Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. For more information and how you can help click Show: If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page for more details. 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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations: Ellen Airhart (2018-03-10). "How Wikipedia Portrayed Humanity in a Single Photo". Wired. Retrieved 2018-03-11. ...the editors of the "human" entry on Wikipedia were having such a hard time in 2003. The crowdsourced encyclopedia, in theory, offers a solution to the problem of representation; no single writer has control over the way in which a subject is presented. But still: They had to choose a single image to lead the entry. And whatever photo they went with would inevitably leave out most of the diversity and cultural nuance that makes humanity beautiful and interesting. James Felton (2025-04-07). "Why Do These Two People Represent All Humans On Wikipedia?". Iflscience. Retrieved 2025-04-07. There were plenty of other problems too, with other editors suggesting that the top image should be of real humans who wear clothes, given the importance and ubiquity of clothing for humanity.

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The Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use require that editors disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation" with respect to any paid contribution; see WP:PAID. For advice about reviewing paid contributions, see WP:COIRESPONSE. Davykamanzi (talk · contribs) has been paid by Upwork user "Goro Goro". (diff) Text and/or other creative content from this version of Homo sapiens was copied or moved into Human with this edit on 14:31, January 19, 2017. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

So, I made a few things more precise (hopefully), but in general, this lemma is too much a biology article. While this makes sense for related articles for animals, plants, etc., where we usually do not know more than the biological aspects, I feel it does not make sense here. The effect is, as they denote here, that it reads like an article which an alien species has written about us. That can not be right. However, English is not my mother tongue, so I refrain from trying to fix it. I can just point to the German lemma, which does the job much better in this case, in my opinion Heronils (talk) 04:19, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

see the faq Radman the 12th (talk) 20:07, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change the "humans are in a biological sense animals." to "humans are animals.", the biological term is unnecessary, you might as well say that lions are biologically animals. Also, change the "Humans belong to the biological family of apes (superfamily Hominoidea)." to "Humans are apes (superfamily Hominoidea).", it avoids repetition. ~2025-32672-05 (talk) 18:46, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. NotJamestack (talk) 19:12, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For most of their history they were hunter-gatherers...As opposed to what? Prior to the invention of agriculture, isn't it true that every vertebrate (and many an invertebrate) was a hunter-gatherer? I dislike this term more because it pretends to inform but doesn't. Last I heard, it's believed that some of our ancestors - possibly most at one point - lived by large bodies of water for many generations; by definition NOT hunter-gatherers. The blanket "they were hunter-gatherers" lacks nuance and implies they ALL were, which is dubious. Also, last I heard, our species is homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens is an abbreviation. This may no longer be true, IDK. But if it is now true, there are plenty of people (like me) who aren't aware of the change in terminology so this change needs to be mentioned - if it is actually correct. I note that in WP, the usage is pervasive. The article uses "history" to mean the non-literary prehistoric period. Our history began ~10,000 BCE. Before that is our prehistory. The meager paleoanthopological records we have don't qualify to be a convincing record of our past. I find this article squishy. Sorta right, but mostly wrong. What, for instance, does it mean to describe ourselves as a species when we're a mixture of species lineages? (i.e. some, but not all of us have Neanderthal dna, some Denisovian, and some not either?). Are we a species? Were we always? (I'd say yes, we are and no we weren't but what do I know.) Finally, the article is over-all severely lacking in authoritative references.~2025-31506-44 (talk) 11:57, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For a start, most vertebrate species (or most mammals, anyway) aren't hunter-gatherers. The majority are herbivores, eating plants. A minority are carnivores, eating other animals. As for what you heard regarding 'living by large bodies of water', you are probably referring to the Aquatic ape hypothesis, which is generally discounted by academic scholarship as vague, unsupported by evidence, and bordering on pseudoscience. Regarding 'history', the term is somewhat ambiguous, and I'd call your objection somewhat nit-picking, though others might differ. As for being 'a mixture of species lineages', this is entirely true, but only if you adopt a particular position amongst the many definitions of 'species' that currently abound. There isn't any agreed scientific definition as to what exactly constitutes a 'species', and nor is there ever likely to be - there are biologists who will tell you that a 'species' is just a social construct, created to make a complex reality easier to think about. They are probably right.

I'm quite sure there are issues with this article, but if you wish to see it improved, you will have to do better than make vague complaints based on things you think you know. We need appropriate reliable sources to base content on, and concrete suggestions as to specific changes. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:17, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why would proximity to water prevent you from hunting or gathering? GMG^talk 12:39, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From what I've read, the fringe aquatic ape hypothesis is very much orientated around an omniverous shoreline hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Such environments present very diverse food opportunities - fish, aquatic birds, mammals etc to hunt, along with many types of edible plant sources etc to gather. And then there are invertibrates like crustaceans and molluscs, which one doesn't really need to hunt, making the distinction between hunting and gathering more to do with the 'how' than the 'what'. I doubt that the OP has actually read our hunter-gatherer article, and I suspect they are just guessing as to what they think the words mean. Not a good start, if you want to complain about an article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:52, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have looked into the source for the stated 12% death rate in medieval times. the box plot (figure 3) in the study seems to show seems to show a much lower death rate of roughly 3% but the supplementary table shows the 12% again, it also shows higher death rate for the paleolithic. this seems odd to me. am I missing something?

link to the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19758#Sec16 link to the supplementary tables (page 9):https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fnature19758/MediaObjects/41586_2016_BFnature19758_MOESM215_ESM.pdf G0000k (talk) 13:50, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed for a while about the photo used as the lead picture for the article. It really bothers me. Not only is the primary example of a human being not good, it also is low quality and very context based. Fill me in. ~2025-38581-58 (talk) 00:44, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See the FAQ at the top of this page. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:23, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, there are some things not in the FAQ which remain unanswered. Humans don't naturally wear clothing for example, we wouldn't use a photo of a dog in clothes as an infobox image for a specific dog breed. The "use of cultural products such as clothing" clause in A7 does not explain how that is a) neccesary for an article which discussing the biology of humanity or b) how clothing (generally) is a cultural product that is worth noting. TansoShoshen (talk) 15:29, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]