• leftzeroEnglish
    42·
    1 year 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.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I have to vehemently disagree on Pan; at most Australopithecus. narrans is a banger name though, i really like that.