I always thought the “sapiens” came from “thinking”, but I looked it up and it does come from wise! Homo cogitare would have meant thinking man.
Comment on We are the stories we tell ourselves
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 5 months ago
The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens (‘wise man’). In any case it’s an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.
— Sir Terry Pratchett, The Globe (The Science of Discworld, #2), 2002
samus12345@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
I have to vehemently disagree on Pan; at most Australopithecus. narrans is a banger name though, i really like that.
Gloomy@mander.xyz 5 months ago
Thanks, I had to think of this one too.